This article explores the pros and cons of virtual reality simulators, their abilities to train and assess surgical skills, and their potential future applications. Computer-based virtual reality simulators and more conventional box trainers are compared and contrasted. The virtual reality simulator provides objective assessment of surgical skills and immediate feedback further to enhance train...

HYPOTHESIS Surgical undergraduate education in a rural setting is feasible and sound in terms of educational outcomes. DESIGN The final-year surgical curriculum at the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, was restructured to include the option of a rural surgical term. SETTING Five provincial center hospitals in rural South Australia. INTERVENTIONS Forty-three final-year med...

There is no doubt that the great triumphs of Formula One Grand Prix drivers such as Fernando Alonso are due to the efforts of a perfectly synchronised team accomplishing every multiple and complex task necessary to achieve high performance. Their results are the fruit of structured, organised and effective training outside the competitive environment. Care is becoming increasingly complex in ou...

M r Chairman, members, and guests, thank you for the privilege of presenting the 22nd Samuel Jason Mixter Lecture. I first attended the New England Surgical Society in 1974 as a resident at the Brigham, so I was here before the Mixter Lecture by 10 years! Samuel Jason Mixter was president of this organization in 1917, followed by his presidency of the American Surgical Association in 1918. He w...

Campbell and colleagues provide additional evidence hat a highly structured short-term experience in a resourceimited environment enhances training of North Amerian surgical residents. In this case, residents worked ith Operation Smile, which has provided high-volume umanitarian surgical care in many low-income counries for 25 years. Trainees from high-income countries ave also reflected that s...

Traditionally, surgical education was imparted through intensive work, practice, and, most importantly, experience. It was estimated that a trainee would work over 30,000 hours before becoming a consultant. The training curriculum has changed substantially on numerous occasions to meet the requirements of the European Working Time Directive. Despite these perceived thefts from surgical experien...

BM71992;305:8 13-7 Nearsightedness (or myopia) has been recognised for more than 2000 years'; during the past several centuries, efforts have been made to determine its cause and to devise adequate treatment. About a quarter of the population in the West is nearsighted,'`3 and this proportion rises to almost 50% in Asia.4 In the United States nearly a quarter of people aged 12-54 are myopic, an...

The new surgical texts of the thirteenth century suggest that their authors wished their subject to appear as a learned discipline, yet it was still communicated by individual practitioners privately to one or two disciples, not in a university setting. But by 1300, surgery was beginning to be taught formally as part of medicine in many Italian studia, for example, by Dino del Garbo at Siena, t...