Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Surgical residency training programs have traditionally used the operating room to teach surgical skills to trainees through graded responsibility under direct supervision. However, this strategy is no longer feasible. This is especially true for minimally invasive (laparoscopic) surgery. The technical skills needed for laparoscopic surgery are different from those used for open surgery, and lend themselves more to simulation training. Although it has been shown that simulation training does improve a surgeon's technical performance in the operating room, specific curricula using simulated models have not been widely adopted in residency programs. It is thought that this is because very few evidence-based curricula exist for minimally invasive procedures. This proposal describes the development of an evidence-based curriculum to teach laparoscopic colorectal surgery, a technically advanced minimally invasive procedure. Development of this curriculum has the potential to affect surgical training programs on a national and international level by standardizing the competencies required by surgical trainees prior to learning a procedure on a real patient. Finally, results of this study have the potential to affect patient care by ensuring that trainees are able to train to a predetermined level of proficiency before operating on surgical patients.