The PASS Course: Practical Anatomy and Surgical Skills Course as a Pragmatic Primer for Senior Medical Students Pursuing Surgical Residency

The senior year of undergraduate medical education has been scrutinized for lacking emphasis from educators and value for students. Surgical residency program directors and medical students have reported different sets of perceived weaknesses as surgical trainees enter residency. With this in mind, we developed a novel rotation for senior medical students pursuing surgical residency. The rotation incorporates practical didactics, robust skill and simulation training, and an enriching anatomy experience that entails dissections and operations on embalmed and fresh tissue cadavers. To our knowledge, this is the first reported formal training experience for medical students that involves working with fresh tissue cadavers, which have been described as effective models for live human tissue in the operating room. We describe our multifaceted curriculum in detail, discuss its organization, and elaborate on its potential value. We also provide detailed explanations of the curriculum components so that other surgical educators may consider adopting them.

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Learning Process of Medical Students During Simulation Training in Psychiatry

Case Medical Research ◽

10.31525/ct1-nct03983798 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

Medical Students ◽

Learning Process ◽

Simulation Training

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Psychosocial Beliefs of Medical Students Planning to Specialize in Family Medicine

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1997.80.3.987 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 80 (3) ◽

pp. 987-992 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Fred W. Markham ◽

James J. Diamond

Keyword(s):

Internal Medicine ◽

Medical Students ◽

Family Medicine ◽

Family Physicians ◽

Female Students ◽

Further Training ◽

Senior Year ◽

Family Doctors ◽

Fourth Year Medical Students ◽

Belief Scale

The psychosocial orientation of fourth-year medical students planning careers in family medicine was compared to those selecting other specialities using the Physician Belief Scale. This scale has shown that practicing family physicians have a greater psychosocial orientation than those in other specialities such as internal medicine. The current study was done to see whether students choosing family medicine already have this greater orientation before they begin training as residents. 664 fourth-year medical students received surveys during their senior year and 378 (57%) returned completed surveys. Female students had a significantly greater psychosocial orientation than their male peers, but there were no significant differences between students planning residencies in family medicine and those selecting other residencies. The greater orientation of family doctors would appear to be a product of further training and experience either during residency or later during the actual practice of family medicine.

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Establishing a surgical skills laboratory and dissection curriculum for neurosurgical residency training

Journal of Neurosurgery ◽

10.3171/2014.11.jns14902 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 123 (5) ◽

pp. 1331-1338 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

James K. C. Liu ◽

Varun R. Kshettry ◽

Pablo F. Recinos ◽

Kambiz Kamian ◽

Richard P. Schlenk ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Surgical Training ◽

Training Programs ◽

Core Competencies ◽

Technical Skills ◽

Surgical Skills ◽

Training Experience ◽

Surgical Trainees ◽

Modern Health Care ◽

External Pressures ◽

Skills Laboratory

Surgical education has been forced to evolve from the principles of its initial inception, in part due to external pressures brought about through changes in modern health care. Despite these pressures that can limit the surgical training experience, training programs are being held to higher standards of education to demonstrate and document trainee competency through core competencies and milestones. One of the methods used to augment the surgical training experience and to demonstrate trainee proficiency in technical skills is through a surgical skills laboratory. The authors have established a surgical skills laboratory by acquiring equipment and funding from nondepartmental resources, through institutional and private educational grants, along with product donations from industry. A separate educational curriculum for junior- and senior-level residents was devised and incorporated into the neurosurgical residency curriculum. The initial dissection curriculum focused on cranial approaches, with spine and peripheral nerve approaches added in subsequent years. The dissections were scheduled to maximize the use of cadaveric specimens, experimenting with techniques to best preserve the tissue for repeated uses. A survey of residents who participated in at least 1 year of the curriculum indicated that participation in the surgical skills laboratory translated into improved understanding of anatomical relationships and the development of technical skills that can be applied in the operating room. In addition to supplementing the technical training of surgical residents, a surgical skills laboratory with a dissection curriculum may be able to help provide uniformity of education across different neurosurgical training programs, as well as provide a tool to assess the progression of skills in surgical trainees.

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The leadership and followership challenges of doctors in training during the COVID-19 pandemic

British Journal of Hospital Medicine ◽

10.12968/hmed.2021.0021 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Nathan Boardman ◽

Jack Munro-Berry ◽

Judy McKimm

Keyword(s):

Early Career ◽

Formal Training ◽

Clinical Environment ◽

Training Experience ◽

Healthcare Leadership ◽

Leadership Culture ◽

Team Working ◽

Medical Education And Training ◽

And Training

Research carried out in 2016 by the authors investigated the challenges that doctors in training experience around leadership and followership in the NHS. The study explored contemporary healthcare leadership culture and the role of followership from the perspective of early career doctors. It found that the leadership and followership challenges for these doctors in training were associated with issues of social and professional identity, communication, the medical hierarchy, and relationships with senior colleagues (support and trust). These challenges were exacerbated by the busy and turbulent clinical environment in which they worked. To cope with various clinical situations and forms of leadership, doctors in training engage in a range of different followership behaviours and strategies. The study raised implications for medical education and training and suggested that followership should be included as part of formal training in communication and team working skills. The importance of both leadership and followership in the delivery of safe and effective patient care has been brought sharply into focus by the COVID-19 pandemic. This article revisits these challenges in light of the pandemic and its impact on the experiences of doctors in training.

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