Robotic Surgery Blog: Surgical Training Archives

June 16, 2007

3 experts discuss their experience with robotic surgery

Symposium: Robotic surgery in urology: Hype, hope, and reality - Modern Medicine

Community urologists who want to learn this must have an adequate volume of cases, at least 20 prostatectomies a year, and it probably will take 20 or 30 procedures before they are comfortable. For someone doing less than 20 cases a year, it doesn't make much sense. You have to do this procedure with some regularity to keep up your skills.
Pruthi: I hesitate to suggest a number because of the different issues we have mentioned. In the Henry Ford experience, when they looked at complications, the learning curve was 200 cases.2 At Vanderbilt, the surgeon-reported learning curve was 250 cases.2

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March 9, 2007

Robotic Surgery Schedule

I found a way to place my robotic surgery schedule online.

I do not add my operations in advance that far ahead, but it is usually accurate for the upcoming 2 weeks. Urologists interesting in case observations can contact me to watch surgery.

January 2, 2006

The 80 Hour work week

Aggravated DocSurg posts his thoughts about the effect of an 80 hour work week on general surgery residents:

>>Tuesday, December 27, 2005
80 hour week Redux

This month's American Journal of Surgery contains an interesting article from the Dept. of Surgery at Baylor in Houston entitled Impact of the 80-hour work week on resident emergency operative experience. As I have written previously, I am not convinced the 80 hour work restrictions will deal an even hand to surgeons in training, or their future patients. <<

Although the intention of the 80 hour work week for residents is probably good, it certainly has its downfalls.

I was fortunate to finish my residency at Indiana University in 2003. This was the same year that the 80 hour work week was instituted.

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