Fed: Trainee surgeons to practise in cyberspace more often

AAP General News (Australia)
04-10-2006
Fed: Trainee surgeons to practise in cyberspace more often

By Janelle Miles, National Medical Correspondent

BRISBANE, April 10 AAP - Apprentice surgeons will operate on "virtual patients" more
often under a plan to tackle the shortage of surgeons.

Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) president Russell Stitz said the college
was looking at ways to fast-track training so doctors could become fully qualified surgeons
after six years without compromising patient safety.

Some doctors currently take up to a decade to qualify in surgery after completing their
medical degrees and a year's internship at a public hospital.

Under a proposed overhaul, surgical trainees would spend more time in "cyber-training",
practising on virtual simulators - similar to those used by pilots, Dr Stitz said.

The Brisbane-based colorectal surgeon said the simulators, although not quite as realistic
as operating on a patient, were "pretty close" to the real thing.

So much so that "cutting into" a virtual patient's skin, the result projected on a
computer screen, felt just like cutting into human tissue.

"If you're doing a gall bladder operation, you can `grasp' the gall bladder and ...

it feels just like it does when you hold a real one," Dr Stitz said in an interview.

And if the trainee accidentally cuts into a blood vessel, the computer software is
designed to ensure it bleeds.

"You have to react and fix it so it prepares surgeons to deal with adverse events,"

Dr Stitz said.

"There's no substitute for real cases. It's not quite as good as the real thing but
it's pretty good."

Dr Stitz said the college also hoped to persuade governments into providing funds to
get surgical trainees into private hospitals to broaden their case mix.

He said more than half of surgical cases were performed in the private sector, including
non-urgent operations no longer common in major public hospitals.

"We need to access those cases ... in terms of the spread of the case mix we offer
to trainees," Dr Stitz said.

"If you're not seeing any of the common cases in the public system because there isn't
enough money to do them and because the emergency load is blocking all the beds, then
obviously we have to look at the alternatives to train the surgeons."

Dr Stitz said there was an urgent need to find more efficient ways of training surgeons
and reducing hospital waiting lists.

A recent survey of Australian surgeons, average age 55.5, found one in four planned
to permanently down scalpels in the next five years.

Almost half planned to retire within 15 years as the ageing population creates more
demand for surgical services.

The proposed changes have yet to be approved by the nine sub-specialist surgical associations
and societies which come under the RACS banner.

AAP jhm/rj/br

KEYWORD: SURGEONS

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