The requirements of trainees and microsurgical skills

Excerpt

Reduced working time, ever-complex working time schemes, over-administration, raising numbers of trainees, increasing expectations from informed patients, and decreasing classical microsurgical indications build up pressure on our models for adequate neurosurgical education. However, (micro)surgical skills will remain a central element of qualification as a neurosurgeon for years to come and despite numerous emerging interventional technologies. One element for education of the future generation of surgeons consists in providing access to surgical skill labs, and, i.e., making such basic courses obligatory for junior trainees, or for the identification of senior medical students and PGY1/2 trainees, which are predestined for a surgical career. …