Fundamental principles of validation, and reliability: rigorous science for the assessment of surgical education and training

Excerpt

Surgery has always been a dynamic discipline. It has a long history of groundbreaking innovations that dramatically improved the way patients were treated and surgery was practiced. However, nothing could have prepared the surgical community for the revolutionary advances of the last 2 decades. Almost overnight, the traditional open approach to surgery was replaced by a minimally invasive surgery (MIS) approach [2]. Practitioners quickly realized that this novel approach would require new types of training. Suddenly, the directors of surgical residency programs had to deal with faculty members who were questioning the training paradigm that had served surgery well for a century. The traditional Halsteadian method did not seem to be suitable for the new types of skills required for MIS. To make matters worse, the length of time allocated to training residents was contracting. In the European Union in 2001 the European Working time Directive was extended to include physicians in training and this year in the United States of America the mandatory 80 hour work week restriction has been instituted, both dramatically reducing work/training hours for residents. …