Journal of surgical education
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"Global surgery" is becoming an increasingly popular concept not only for new trainees, but also for established surgeons. The need to provide surgical care in low-resource settings is laudable, but the American surgical training system currently does not impart the breadth of skills required to provide quality care. We propose one possible model for a surgical fellowship program that provides those trainees who desire to practice in these settings a comprehensive experience that encompasses not only broad technical skills but also the opportunity to engage in policy and programmatic development and implementation. ⋯ Global surgery is a key word these days in attracting young trainees to academic surgical residency programs, yet they are subsequently inadequately trained to provide the required surgical services in these low-resource settings. Dedicated programmatic changes are required to allow those who choose to practice in these settings to obtain the full breadth of training needed to become safe, competent surgeons in such environments.
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Emergency cricothyrotomy is a rare but potentially lifesaving procedure. Training opportunities for surgical residents to learn this skill are limited, and many graduating residents have never performed one during their training. We aimed to develop and validate a novel and inexpensive cricothyrotomy task trainer that can be constructed from household items. ⋯ A low-fidelity, low-cost cricothyrotomy simulator distinguished the performance of emergency cricothyrotomy between medical students and junior- and senior-level general surgery residents. This task trainer may be ideally suited to providing basic skills to all physicians in training, especially in settings with limited resources and clinical opportunities.
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Wrong-site surgery (WSS) is considered a sentinel event by the Joint Commission. The education of spine surgery fellows on WSS is unknown. Our objective was to evaluate North American spine surgery fellows' education, awareness, and experience with WSS. ⋯ This is the first study evaluating spine surgery fellowship education on WSS. Among the spine surgery fellows, 30% had already experienced WSS and only 33% had formal fellowship didactics on WSS. Owing to the significant patient care and medicolegal ramifications from WSS, spine surgery fellowships should consider adding WSS prevention didactics to their curriculum.
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To define the operations performed by surgical residents at a tertiary referral hospital in Rwanda to help guide development of the residency program. ⋯ The operative experience of surgery residents at CHUK primarily involves emergency and trauma procedures. Although this likely reflects the demographics of surgical care within Rwanda, more focus should be placed on elective procedures to ensure that surgical residents are broadly trained.