Further Results of Incorporating Innovative Procedures in a Surgical Residency

Abstract

The instruction in precipitously advancing surgical technologies remains a real challenge to every surgery program. Our institution's ongoing experience with an identified center for student and resident education and clinical investigation provides an option for addressing these needs in a general surgery residency. Over the past 8 years, we have developed and described previously the Center for Advanced Surgical Technologies (CAST) in a joint undertaking of the Department of Surgery and the Norton Hospital, an affiliated hospital on our medical school campus. The idea behind this program has been to focus and develop high-quality skills in the hospital in many areas of advanced technology. CAST has subsequently provided a vehicle for excellent clinical research as well as the development of specially focused advanced surgical technologies, fellowships, and a large number of publications that have often focused on new, advanced methods for imaging surgical disease and minimal access treatment. This program has had a very positive impact on the general surgery residency as a whole and has permitted a steadily advancing agenda of new technologies, while relegating recently emerged but perfected technologies into the central aspect of our accredited general surgery residency.