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Innovation and Change in Professional Education 17
Debra Nestel
Kirsten Dalrymple
John T. Paige
Rajesh Aggarwal Editors
Advancing
Surgical
Education
Theory, Evidence and Practice
Innovation and Change in Professional
Education
Volume 17
Series editor
Associate editors
L.A. Wilkerson, Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA
H.P.A. Boshuizen, Center for Learning Sciences and Technologies,
Open Universiteit Nederland, Heerlen, The Netherlands
Editorial Board
Eugene L. Anderson, Anderson Policy Consulting & APLU, Washington, DC, USA
Hans Gruber, Institute of Educational Science, University of Regensburg,
Regensburg, Germany
Rick Milter, Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Eun Mi Park, JH Swami Institute for International Medical Education,
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
SCOPE OF THE SERIES
The primary aim of this book series is to provide a platform for exchanging
experiences and knowledge about educational innovation and change in professional
education and post-secondary education (engineering, law, medicine, management,
health sciences, etc.). The series provides an opportunity to publish reviews, issues
of general significance to theory development and research in professional education,
and critical analysis of professional practice to the enhancement of educational
innovation in the professions.
The series promotes publications that deal with pedagogical issues that arise in the
context of innovation and change of professional education. It publishes work from
leading practitioners in the field, and cutting edge researchers. Each volume is
dedicated to a specific theme in professional education, providing a convenient
resource of publications dedicated to further development of professional education.
Advancing Surgical
Education
Theory, Evidence and Practice
Editors
Debra Nestel Kirsten Dalrymple
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Faculty of Medicine
Sciences, Monash Institute for Health Imperial College London
and Clinical Education London, UK
Monash University
Clayton, VIC, Australia Rajesh Aggarwal
Department of Surgery, Sidney Kimmel
Faculty of Medicine Dentistry & Health
Medical College
Sciences, Department of Surgery,
Thomas Jefferson University
Melbourne Medical School
Philadelphia, PA, USA
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Australia Jefferson Strategic Ventures
Jefferson Health
John T. Paige Philadelphia, PA, USA
Department of Surgery
Louisiana State University School
of Medicine
New Orleans, LA, USA
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Foreword by Richard Canter
This book is a timely and exciting addition to the surgical education literature. Let
me explain why. The last 30 years or so has seen a transformation in surgical educa-
tion with three distinct elements of change: organisational to university-based sys-
tems of quality, provider to demand-led delivery of service and surgeon to
surgeon-educator. Arguably the most important of these has been surgeon to
surgeon-educator because of the ability to scale up excellence. A highly skilled
surgeon may, for example, complete 10,000 operations in a career and hopefully
bring improvements to 10,000 patients. If at the same time they develop 20 surgical
trainees to the same level of excellence, who themselves go onto complete 10,000
operations, then the spread of excellence is exponentially increased. The point is
rapidly approaching when surgeons not only develop other surgeons to a standard of
excellence but also pass on the educational skills for them to do the same. This
means that there is the potential over a surgical generation or two for the excellent
practice of a single surgeon to influence thousands or even millions of patients. So
far, so good. Unfortunately, the same argument can be applied to the spread of poor
practice and the capacity to do harm. This is the reason why research into surgical
education, and how to develop excellence in yourself and others, is so important.
This book is not only timely but also important for patient welfare.
The discipline of surgical education has spawned a real and increasing interest in
education theory, practice and research with many choosing to adopt significant
roles as educators in their institutions. The four editors have identified expertise
from experienced researchers and brought together a set of fascinating chapters
linking practice, theory, evidence and research methods. For anyone interested in
surgical education, and in particular in education research, this has got to be a first
choice book to read. Why? Because the breathtaking range of topics that now cover
the field of surgical education will disturb some basic assumptions about relevant
topic, what constitutes evidence, the choice of research paradigm, the selection of
methodology and relevant literature so will encourage you to go on an intellectual
v
vi Foreword by Richard Canter
journey of discovery. Don’t be surprised if one evening you find yourself reading
philosophers like Foucault and others and enjoying the challenge of new unexpected
ideas that are relevant to surgery. Surgery, surgical education and surgeons have all
changed so much in such a short time, and yet this is only the beginning.
The concept and the need of a textbook specifically on surgical education was envis-
aged and developed following the recognition of the global and broader need for
professional development in health professions education.
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the University of Melbourne’s
Department of Surgery have implemented the highly successful graduate pro-
grammes in surgical education, initiated by Prof. John Collins and implemented by
one of the editors of this book – Prof. Debra Nestel. This book is a logical sequela
to these programmes and makes compelling reading for any person committed to
surgical education and aspires to leadership in this rapidly expanding field. The edi-
tors have brought together an outstanding group of contributors comprising experi-
enced, internationally recognised authors and national contributors comprehensively
addressing concepts and topics pertaining to surgical education.
Apart from being a knowledge and reference resource, this pioneering book is
global in perspective, provocative and challenges established dogma. It is divided
into five sections and follows a sequence initially addressing governance and theo-
ries of surgical education and the practical aspects faced by those at the coalface of
this specialty. It concludes by addressing research aspects and the future
directions.
This book will prove to be an indispensable armamentarium to those involved in
this evolving field and reflects the expertise and enthusiasm of the editors and
contributors.
vii
Foreword by Carlos Pellegrini
ix
x Foreword by Carlos Pellegrini
provides a “destination postcard” for 2030. All in all, this book provides a plethora
of information and guidance that will serve surgeon-teachers around the world in
the years to come.
xi
xii Contents
Index.................................................................................................................. 483
Chapter 1
Celebrating Surgical Education
Overview The surgeon as educator faces the challenges of adequately preparing the
next generation of surgeons while maintaining a busy practice and keeping up with
the latest developments and innovations of the field through familiarity with best
evidence in literature. This book helps with keeping up with the latest best evidence
in education research and theory. As surgical care has a universal component related
to the responsibility entrusted to the surgeon and the healing through combination of
mind and hand, so too surgical education involves disseminating knowledge as well
as skill. This book aims to address knowledge of surgical education. In this chapter,
we share drivers for the book and personal perspectives that inform its shape. We
also acknowledge the many influences on our own thinking and practices.
1.1 Introduction
Surgical education is in an exciting phase. This book celebrates some of its many
achievements. In this chapter, we summarise key influencing factors in the develop-
ment of this book, and we share personal perspectives and orientate readers to the
content.
D. Nestel (*)
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash Institute for Health and Clinical
Education, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
Faculty of Medicine Dentistry & Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Melbourne
Medical School, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
e-mail: dnestel@unimelb.edu.au; debra.nestel@monash.edu
K. Dalrymple
Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK
e-mail: k.dalrymple@imperial.ac.uk
J. T. Paige
Department of Surgery, Louisiana State University School of Medicine,
New Orleans, LA, USA
e-mail: jpaige@lsuhsc.edu
Several factors influenced the initiation and development of this book. The shift-
ing orientation of surgical education from an apprentice-based model to a
competency-based one with interim variations has created an opportunity for the
discipline to grow. This has occurred at a time with parallel development in theories
that inform educational practice. These theories offer frameworks to make meaning
of and guide educational program design, implementation and evaluation. During
the last 30 years, there has been significant development in educational theories and
practices, many of which have been ‘overlooked’ by surgical educators who have
remained rooted solely in an apprenticeship model.
This book provides opportunities to access a broad range of theories – some
theories enable us to take a macro view of practice (social/cultural/political), while
others focus on the micro (individual as learner and/or teacher). We include offer-
ings across this spectrum. These new opportunities to view surgical education as
something amenable to structure, measurement, standardisation and examination
through educational theory have moved the field forward. It has become fairer, safer
and more knowledgeable of itself, in many regards, but these advances have some-
times come with costs and a realisation of the limitations of, for example,
competency-based education. There is a growing recognition, and some might
rightly call a reassertion of the importance of fostering meaningful, trusting, social
relationships between learners and teachers as a basis for growing trainee surgeons’
surgical judgement and skill and for considering their progress. Taking more holis-
tic views of expertise, of what constitutes surgical ‘community’, and of surgery’s
end goal of improving the health and well-being of patients brings us back to con-
sidering the role of trust, not only as a facet of professional practice but of educa-
tional practice. If we subscribe to the argument that this is where significant
development happens, for both educators and trainees, our efforts to understand and
improve our practice as educators must also embrace the social, the cultural and the
individual as a person. That this parallels arguments around the care of patients is
not coincidental.
Being a surgical educator today affords new opportunities to develop an identity
that goes beyond what it did in the past. It adds a knowledge-based, skill-based and
the critical judgement of another professional practice to surgery’s existing training
traditions – it adds the field of education. Bringing the field of education to the sur-
gical educator provides a wider repertoire of tools with which to examine difficult
and complex educational problems.
With the professionalisation of surgical education comes greater acknowledge-
ment and recognition of its expertise. This has become more evident through the
development of standards for practice such as those published by the Faculty of
Surgical Trainers in Edinburgh in 2014 [1]. In Australia, the Academy of Surgical
Educators was launched in 2013 and seeks to ‘foster excellence’ [2]. In 2017, the
American College of Surgeons established the Academy of Master Surgeon
Educators which will function as a ‘think tank’ seeking to improve the quality of
surgical education. Annual and biannual conferences in surgical education are focal
events for surgical education scholars and educators – the International Conference
on Surgical Education and Training (ICOSET) and the United States-based
1 Celebrating Surgical Education 3
This book sits in the Springer series: Innovation and Change in Professional
Education. This is a logical home for several reasons. At its heart, the book is about
innovation. Authors have been invited to contribute because of their innovative and
often critical positioning and philosophising about ways to support the next genera-
tion of surgeons. The landscape of surgical practice and education is a dynamic one.
This sort of change is inevitable and welcomed, as the community whose needs are
to be met by the profession, and those who are to meet them also change. And,
although surgery is a professional practice, the education of surgeons has often been
of low value in departments of surgery. Surgical education has not been seen as
requiring the development of educational expertise. This aligns with privileging the
language of surgical training over surgical education in common parlance. Our posi-
tion is that the responsibility of those charged with supporting the development of
the next generation of surgeons needs more than a training focus. They also require
a deep and deliberate consideration of values about teaching and learning. This
book provides an opportunity to prompt critical reflection on the values and prac-
tices associated with surgical education.
In its very construction, the book attempts to model the bringing together of
surgical education perspectives and the nurturing of a new generation of surgical
education scholars. The authors are drawn from various parts of the globe and are
comprised of teams of surgeons and academics from education, the social sciences
and more. With their different backgrounds and perspectives come forms of writing
and argument that may vary from those with which you are more familiar. We invite
you to explore these varied ways of communicating knowledge and challenge you
to make links with more familiar approaches. We believe that this book goes beyond
those before it in its breadth, depth and examination of surgical education practices
and the ways in which they are communicated.
Our editorial team came together through our links with Imperial College London,
three of us (DN, KD, RA) having worked at Imperial for extended periods, and JP
has undertaken research with colleagues based at Imperial. Collectively, we have
expertise in various facets of education and surgical knowledge and practice. During
the development of this book, we have been living and working across four coun-
tries – Australia (DN), the United Kingdom (UK) (KD), Canada (RA) and the
United States of America (USA) (JP and RA) – and we are all actively involved in
surgical education.
Debra Nestel PhD FSSH has worked in surgical education for about 10 years and
broader health professions education for over 30 years, in Hong Kong, London and
Melbourne. Currently Professor of Surgical Education, Department of Surgery,
University of Melbourne, and Professor of Simulation Education in Healthcare,
Monash University, Australia, Debra spends her time approximately equally in edu-
cation research and practice. She is Co-Director of the Graduate Programs in
1 Celebrating Surgical Education 5
Surgical Education and the Graduate Programs in Surgical Science. After Professor
John Collins, then Dean of Education, RACS, had a proposal for post-graduate
qualifications in surgical education approved, Debra was tasked with its implemen-
tation. A core reference book was an important driver for this project. Debra’s first
degree was in sociology, and this seeps through much of her current practice. She
has a strong interest in simulation, especially simulated patient methodology and in
faculty development. Debra mainly conducts qualitative research while appreciat-
ing the role of all research paradigms to address the broad range of questions rele-
vant to surgical education. She has also edited books on simulated patient
methodology and healthcare simulation and is editor-in-chief of the open access
journal, Advances in Simulation, the journal of the Society in Europe for Simulation
Applied to Medicine. She holds service roles in many professional organisations.
Kirsten Dalrymple, PhD, is Principal Teaching Fellow and Course Co-Director,
Master’s in Education in Surgical Education, Department of Surgery and Cancer,
Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London. She has worked in health profes-
sions education for over 15 years, having trained initially as a biomedical scientist.
Before working in the United Kingdom, Kirsten played a lead role in major curricu-
lar changes and faculty development at the University of Southern California’s
School of Dentistry. She has been a key figure in the execution and ongoing devel-
opment of Imperial’s Master’s in Surgical Education since 2008, having had the
opportunity to work closely as tutor and research supervisor for surgeons from dif-
ferent countries, specialties and at different stages of their careers. Her work with
clinical colleagues and her own scientific background have shaped her interest in
how values and views of knowledge impact educational practice and have provided
her with motivation to build links between education and surgery. She is currently
working on a pedagogic project exploring how failure and mistakes are perceived
by different disciplines, including surgery, and the impact this has on professional
development. She serves on two of Imperial’s educational research ethics
committees.
John Paige MD, FACS, joined the Department of Surgery at Louisiana State
University (LSU) School of Medicine in New Orleans in 2002 where he has prac-
ticed general and minimally invasive surgery. Currently, he is Professor of Clinical
Surgery with additional appointments in the Departments of Anesthesiology and
Radiology. He serves as both overall and surgical director of the American College
of Surgeons Accredited Comprehensive Education Institute, the LSU Health New
Orleans School of Medicine Learning Center. John has dedicated his academic
career to surgical education and research. His published work in simulation and
surgical education related to skills acquisition and interprofessional team training
has led him to present nationally and internationally. He is an active member of
several national surgical society simulation, education and faculty development
committees, holding leadership positions. He is coeditor of a book on simulation in
radiology. He has been a coinvestigator on federally funded grants exploring team
training. John’s areas of interest include simulation-based skills training, interpro-
fessional education, team training, human factors, patient safety and debriefing.
6 D. Nestel et al.
1.3 Conclusion
In closing this chapter, we acknowledge many of those who have influenced our
thinking and practices, some of whom are contributors to this book. The five sec-
tions of the book commence with orientation notes offering linkages between the
varied contributions. We hope you enjoy the contents of this book as much as we
have in working with our colleagues from around the world in assembling examples
of their scholarship. Time to celebrate.
References
1. McIlhenny, C., & Pitts, D. (2014). Standards for surgical trainers Edinburgh: Royal college
of surgeons Edinburgh. Available from: https://fst.rcsed.ac.uk/standards-for-surgical-trainers.
aspx
2. Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. (2017). Academy of surgical educators. [Cited
2017 November 11]. Available from: https://www.surgeons.org/for-health-professionals/
academy-of-surgical-educators/
3. Fry, H., & Kneebone, R. (2011). Surgical education: Theorising an emerging domain. London:
Springer.
4. Pugh, C., & Sippel, R. (2013). Success in academic surgery: Developing a career in surgical
education. London: Springer.
5. Imperial College London. MEd surgical education. [Cited 2017 November 11]. Available
from: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/study/postgraduate/masters-programmes/
med-surgical-education/
6. University of Melbourne and Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Master of surgical
education. [Cited 2017 November 11]. Available from: https://coursesearch.unimelb.edu.au/
grad/1865-master-of-surgical-education
7. Kneebone, R. (2002). Total internal reflection: An essay on paradigms. Medical Education,
36(6), 514–518.
Part I
Overview: Foundations of Surgical
Education
The first part of this book explores foundations of surgical education from its his-
torical roots in apprenticeship to its transformation over time to address changes to
medicine, surgery, and wider society. As noted in the introduction to the book, con-
temporary surgical practice and education are dynamic entities that interact with
one another. In his historical perspective, Kneebone considers the relative certain-
ties of surgical education over the last century and how recent practices have resulted
in the current state of “fluidity and instability” (Chap. 2). He concludes this chapter
“reflecting on the continual process by which innovation becomes established as a
‘new normal,’ only to be overtaken in its turn by continuing change.” This offers
further justification for this book to be located in the series: Innovation and Change
in Professional Education.
Anthony and Muralidharan examine the shift to competency-based surgical
education from the long history of apprenticeship (Chap. 3). Using the context of
surgical training in Australia and New Zealand, they describe the Royal Australasian
College of Surgeons (RACS) and other institutional approaches to developing an
educationally aware community of surgical educators, essential to address contem-
porary drivers for surgical education. One important challenge is to balance the
increasing demands on the surgical education workforce while delivering an
expanded surgical curriculum that best serves the modern community. The authors
acknowledge an orientation to actively develop well-rounded surgeons, where the
“nontechnical” skills are valued alongside conventional and other characteristic
skills of operating. For many issues, they consider its impact at macro-, meso-, and
microlevels. Although their work has a regional context, many of the issues have
relevance globally.
From Gogainaceu et al., we learn of the support of leadership development in
surgical training (Chap. 4). This is an element of professional practice that has often
not formed part of traditional curricula. The authors describe how leadership and
education are similar transformative processes that “facilitate growth, foster
collaborations and increase scientific knowledge, innovation and enterprise.” They
also explore the role of academy in the development of leaders and educators and,
indeed, educational leaders.
8 I Overview: Foundations of Surgical Education
Quality in surgical education must have a central role and one manifestation is
governance. From a United Kingdom perspective, Eardley reviews the place of the
Surgical Royal Colleges in the governance of surgical training – in curriculum
development, assessment, selection, certification, quality assurance, and trainee
support (Chap. 5). Additionally, the chapter describes the complex and changing
relationship of the colleges with the regulator, the funder, and the education
providers.
In summary, this part offers a status check on where we have been and where we
are. Two focused topics that must be considered for developing excellence in
surgical education – leadership and governance – illustrate essential foundations for
change and quality.
Chapter 2
Surgical Education: A Historical
Perspective
Roger Kneebone
Overview This chapter considers how the landscape of surgical education has
changed over the past century and how the educational certainties of an earlier gen-
eration have been supplanted by fluidity and instability. After outlining the estab-
lishment of open surgery in the first half of the twentieth century, the chapter uses
the introduction of minimally invasive (keyhole) surgery in the 1980s as a lens for
examining the educational implications of surgical innovation and the processes by
which such innovation can trigger educational change. At the same time, the discus-
sion charts the emergence of professionalism of surgical education, shaped by
expert perspectives from outside medicine. This has led to a broadening of method-
ological approaches to the investigation of educational questions and the establish-
ment of surgical education as a scholarly field with its own identity. The chapter
concludes by reflecting on the continual process by which innovation becomes
established as a ‘new normal’, only to be overtaken in its turn by continuing change.
This chapter surveys how the landscape of surgical education has changed over the
past century and how contemporary challenges have been shaped by the past. In that
time, the surgical world – together with the sociopolitical world it responds to and
reflects – has become increasingly fluid and unstable. Disciplinary boundaries are
becoming blurred, and new technologies are overturning previously settled ways of
knowing and of doing. The focus of surgical education has shifted from learning
how to do things as they are already done to responding to (and moulding) a surgical
world that is in continual flux. A professionalisation of education has taken place
which has moved beyond the frame of surgical practice to include expert perspec-
tives from outside medicine. This has profound implications for what it means to be
a surgeon and a surgical educator.
R. Kneebone (*)
Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, London, UK
e-mail: r.kneebone@imperial.ac.uk
experience in operative surgery. The ‘firm’ system ensured continuity of care for
patients and offered a supportive and collegiate milieu for clinicians but required
high levels of commitment and exceptionally long hours of work. An important
effect of this demanding training was to develop a surgical identity amongst those
who underwent it – a shared sense of what it meant to ‘be’ a surgeon as well as to
do surgical work, as much about who a surgeon became as what he or she could do.
In contrast to undergraduate medical education, with its focus on curriculum and
formal learning, postgraduate surgical learning was assumed more than designed or
prescribed. Assessment of fitness to progress within the system was unsystematic,
opaque and based on the personal judgment of senior clinicians.
By the mid-twentieth century, surgery seemed to have reached a steady state. A
stable social structure for interaction between patients and professionals was taken
for granted, and – as with education in schools and universities more generally –
what was to be learned appeared fixed and unchanging. This approach represented
the wider sociopolitical context of the time, with its climate of deference and
confidence in authority in general and in the medical profession in particular.
Publics and politicians trusted clinicians to design and oversee their own educa-
tional as well as clinical practice, and post-war social assumptions were clearly
visible.
By this time, surgical training had become well-established, with education
accepted as a by-product of clinical care. The assumption was that by working
within the healthcare system for long enough, a learner would eventually become
expert. The extended apprenticeship system provided enormous experience in the
skills of operating, while the ‘firm’ structure ensured that trainee surgeons became
versed in all aspects of patient care (including continuity between ward and theatre)
and became part of a close-knit (if closed and often inward-looking) professional
community. For surgeons, therefore, education and clinical care were inseparable.
There were few specific courses or programmes, and surgical learning took place
from within, as part of being a practitioner. Senior surgeons were expected to teach
in every aspect of their practice, from outpatient clinic and ward to operating theatre
and emergency room, but there was no overt surgical curriculum. Learning took
place by absorption, underpinned by an assumption that by the end of training,
trainees would have been exposed to sufficient breadth and depth of experience to
undertake full responsibility when they became consultants themselves. Professional
examinations were more about factual knowledge than practical skill.
By the 1980s, all this began to change. Part of this disruption was technological.
Discoveries and developments in areas such as imaging, energy sources, fibre optics
and miniaturisation led to new opportunities within operative surgery and medicine
as a whole. The power of surgery (until then confined to what could be done with
relatively simple instruments) became enormously enlarged. At the same time, a
shift from diagnosis to intervention meant that previously sharp distinctions between
surgery, medicine, radiology and other disciplines started to become smudged.
Intestinal endoscopy, for example, was developed by gastroenterologists and radi-
ologists, and surgeons were no longer the only group who carried out delicate inva-
sive procedures on patients.
12 R. Kneebone
Another aspect of this disruption was societal, reflecting equally profound politi-
cal and social change at that time. Public faith in the skill and beneficence of doctors
began to be questioned, challenging previously stable structures of authority and
deference. A series of prominent cases in the UK included the Bristol heart surgeons
(where it became clear that some paediatric cardiac surgeons continued to operate
on small children while knowing that their results were worse than those of col-
leagues), the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital scandal (where pathologists removed
and retained body parts without parents’ knowledge or consent) and the notorious
Dr. Harold Shipman (who systematically murdered scores of patients). These and
others started to erode the unquestioning trust of an earlier generation, reconfigur-
ing relationships between clinicians, patients and society. Management structures
within the health service were redesigned too, and clinical practice was no longer
the exclusive province of clinicians. Clinical education too came under the micro-
scope, and educational practice began to open up to specialist non-clinicians.
What became known as keyhole surgery provides a useful example of how tech-
nical innovation, public perception and a changing sociopolitical climate collectively
precipitated educational change. This change was shockingly rapid. If it is difficult
for trainees starting a surgical career today to envisage a world before minimally
invasive surgery, it is perhaps even more difficult to imagine a world without the
Internet, mobile phones or word processors. In the mid-1980s, none of these things
were there. Yet within a single surgical generation, a radical new approach to opera-
tive surgery became embedded as the ‘new normal’.
Keyhole surgery can be seen as a watershed in many ways. In surgical terms, it
transformed perceptions of the need for surgery to be invasive, demonstrating that
major interventions could be carried out through tiny incisions which dramatically
reduced pain and shortened hospital stays. In social terms, it marked a shift in the
balance of power between the profession and the public, showing how pressure
from patients accelerated the adoption of a new approach [7]. In educational terms,
it highlighted how a radical change in surgical practice (apparently a technical
issue) continues to reverberate through surgical training.
The meteoric rise of keyhole surgery is instructive. In the 1980s, a number of
clinicians were exploring how to minimise the trauma of open surgery, with its
extensive incisions. Taking advantage of technical developments of the time (includ-
ing advances in imaging, energy sources and fibre-optic technology), they devel-
oped innovative ways of collaborative working in order to solve technical challenges.
The urologist John Wickham, for example, pioneered percutaneous nephrolithot-
omy for the removal of renal tract stones. Working closely with an interventional
radiologist, instrument designer and other clinical colleagues, Wickham made a
major contribution to what has now become a commonplace procedure. In the pro-
cess, he modelled a new surgical approach, challenging the dominant role of the
surgeon and suggesting instead that power be distributed within a surgical team to
draw on multiple sources of expertise. The author has researched this process in
detail, gathering first-hand accounts of a transformative time by using simulation-
based re-enactment to document not only technical developments but relationships
with patients and within clinical teams [8–10].
2 Surgical Education: A Historical Perspective 13
As surgery’s power increased, so did its potential for causing harm. Once the
benefits of minimally invasive therapy (as Wickham named it) started to become
known, pressure from patients mounted for surgeons to perform procedures laparo-
scopically. A series of high-profile disasters raised public awareness of the dangers
of the new surgery in inexpert hands. Iatrogenic damage during elective laparo-
scopic surgery showed that specific training was needed, even (perhaps especially)
for experienced surgeons who had acquired great expertise in open surgery but
struggled with making the transition to a different paradigm.
This posed an educational challenge. The manipulation of keyhole instruments
required qualities which were not guaranteed by seniority and expertise in open
surgery but required specific aptitudes, training and experience. The physical chal-
lenges of manipulating tissues and materials at a distance using unfamiliar instru-
ments, viewed via screen-based images rather than direct vision, demanded
unfamiliar perceptual and fine motor skills. The ‘new surgery’ was new for all
surgeons and levelled the playing field. This triggered a systematic approach to
learning these unfamiliar ways of seeing and doing. Because keyhole surgery was
revolutionary rather than evolutionary, it became easier to make the case that all
surgeons (not just beginners) needed formal training. There was no shame in a sur-
geon admitting that he or she was not an expert in this radically new approach
(unlike admitting to uncertainty in a field in which they were already regarded as
expert). The established approach of learning from seniors who had mastered what
learners aspired to learn did not hold when the masters themselves were on uncer-
tain ground. There was a need instead for education based on meeting the demands
of the new rather than absorbing the ways of the old. Training courses multiplied
and assessment took centre stage.
The requirement for specialised motor skills brought a new emphasis on techni-
cal aspects of surgery. A distinction between ‘technical’ and ‘non-technical’ skills
arose, raising issues about how fine manipulative skills in particular might be taught,
learned and assessed. ‘Skills laboratories’ were established, where surgeons could
practise and perfect the manipulative skills which laparoscopic surgery required.
The separation and privileging of technical skills over broader clinical expertise
continue to reverberate today. In addition to its obvious benefits in ensuring high
standards of manipulative skill, it has had the unintended effect within surgical edu-
cation of displacing attention from other aspects of surgical practice, especially the
holistic care of patients outside the operating theatre.
At the same time, a burgeoning patient safety movement was gathering momen-
tum, and it became increasingly clear that clinical care in all specialties could inflict
damage as well as conferring benefit. This contributed to the rise of simulation as a
mainstay of education, arguing that many skills should be practised and perfected
outside the operating theatre, where real patients would not be placed at risk of
harm. Huge investment went into simulation facilities, with industries vying for
position as suppliers of costly sophisticated simulators and related equipment. This
focus on technical skills drew attention further away from the wider considerations
of surgery as a holistic clinical practice (for its patients) and an educational com-
munity (for its practitioners).
14 R. Kneebone
2.1 Conclusions
As a clinician entering surgery, it is easy to think that things have always been as they
are now. It is salutary to reflect on how much has changed over a single professional
lifetime. The constantly accelerating rate of change means that challenges will arise
at ever-decreasing intervals. Surgical education is shaped and defined as much by its
social setting as by its professional and technical context. Perhaps, instead of follow-
ing clinical innovation, surgical education should accompany or lead it.
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Language: Finnish
Kirj.
Suomennos
SISÄLLYS:
I. Juhlan jälkeen.
II. Metsärajalla.
III. Suurella laitumella.
IV. Aitauksessa.
V. Palanen menneisyyttä.
VI. Juoksuaita.
VII. Iltahämärissä.
VIII. Keskustelua polttomerkeistä.
IX. Tailholt Mountainin miehet.
X. Karjankierros.
XI. Karjankierroksen jälkeen.
XII. Ratkaisun päivä.
XIII. Graniittiylängöllä.
XIV. Lähteen partailla.
XV. Setririnteellä.
XVI. Taivaanrannan taa.
I LUKU.
Juhlan jälkeen.
»Kyllä, herra.»
»Kiitos.»
»Rovasti?»
»Aion kyllä.»
Metsärajalla.
»Niin kai», virkkoi ratsastaja lauhkeasti, »ja minä suon sen teille
sydämestäni. Jokainen mies tarvitsee omat vastoinkäymisensä,