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Speaker: Education through technology is the key for the future of hand surgery
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SAN FRANCISCO — The future of upper extremity surgery education will be through electronic media, with residents and fellows using distance learning, surgical simulation and smartphone apps, according to a speaker at the American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting, here.
"Tomorrow's hand surgeons will have the same commitment to lifelong learning. They are just going to access education in a different manner than we do today," Edward Akelman, MD, president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) and vice chairman of the Department of Orthopedics at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, stated in his presidential address. "To be successful, our distance learning process must absolutely be mobile."
Edward Akelman
In his address, Akelman introduced Hand-e, a website that will contain comprehensive and interactive data from the Surgery of the Hand Upper Extremity curriculum that will be available between December 2013 and January 2014. He also noted surgical simulation is a tool general surgeons have adopted that would benefit hand surgeons as well.
"I believe we should embrace surgical simulation as our [general] surgical colleagues have because they have demonstrated proficiency before operating room (OR) experience,” Akelman said. “They have also demonstrated improved patient safety and reduced OR errors. After initial surgical simulation training there are shorter procedure and OR times, and actually what is most important is at least in surgery, both residents and faculty have experienced better interaction in this environment and improved operative skills."
Reference:
Akelman E. ASSH presidential address: Has the teaching paradigm shifted? – The future of surgical education in a digital world. Presented at: American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting; Oct. 3-5, 2013; San Francisco.
Disclosure: Akelman receives institutional support from the National Institutes of Health, receives royalties from Integra/Auxilium, receives stock options from Johnson & Johnson and Biometrics Therapeutics and is a consultant for Wright Medical Technologies.