Neurosurgical operating room
Integrating medical students into the neurosurgical operating room (OR) presents significant pedagogical challenges, compounded by the phenomenon of neurophobia, or aversion to neuroscience. Despite the importance of early neurosurgical exposure, there is a lack of structured educational strategies for undergraduates.
Lawson et al. present twelve targeted strategies to optimize neurosurgical OR education. These include preoperative planning, fostering a positive learning environment, emphasizing technological integration, involving students in decision-making, prioritizing safety, providing regular feedback, facilitating active participation, leveraging teachable moments, managing time constraints, offering follow-up opportunities, emphasizing professionalism, and fostering a learning culture.
Discussion and conclusion: This framework addresses a critical gap in neurosurgical education for undergraduates, tackling neurophobia and enhancing learning experiences. Integrating educational theories with practical insights offers a robust, adaptable approach suitable for various global resource settings. Through continuous evaluation and refinement, these strategies can evolve to meet the dynamic demands of neurosurgical education, preparing students to navigate the complexities of modern neurosurgical practice with confidence and competence 1)
Residents in neurosurgery have to spend a lot of time in the operating room to become familiar with surgical anatomy and techniques and to develop practical skills 2) 3) 4). Although intraoperative surgical exposure represents the fundamental way to train surgeons, several drawbacks are encountered in every country. Differences between departments, hospitals, and nations are wide, and residents often do not have the same opportunity in their education and operation room in particular 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11)
It is estimated that 70% of hospital revenue is generated in the operating room (OR) 12) and 30% of hospital waste.
The implementation of a universal surgical safety checklist protocol in 2004 was intended to minimize the prevalence of wrong site surgery (WSS). However, complete elimination of WSS in the operating room continues to be a challenge.
There is an urgent need in the acute health system to use resources as efficiently as possible. One such group of resources are operating theatres, which have an important impact on patient flow through a hospital. Data-driven insights into the use of operating theatres can suggest improvements to minimise wastage and improve theatre availability.
In a paper, a short extract of surgical data from participating Queensland public hospitals was statistically analysed to examine the effects of session type, session specialty, scheduling the longest case first and day of the week on theatre utilisation. It was found that day-long sessions (as opposed to separate morning or afternoon sessions), mid-week sessions, certain specialties (eg. neurosurgery sessions) and not doing the longest case first were most beneficial to theatre utilisation. Awareness of these findings is important in any redesign activity aimed at improving flow performance 13).