Generally, in order to become a physician, regardless of the specialty, medical students are required to complete four years of medical school following the accomplishment of their undergraduate degree. Depending on their choice of specialty, medical students are also required to complete a certain number of years of residency. In order to better prepare medical residents, specifically surgical trainees, many physicians have decided that prior to performing any sort of actual surgery, residents should be required to ‘practice’ by means of a preliminary virtual surgery.

As reported in Medical News Today by Dr. Paddock, similar to how athletes are required to warm up prior to any performance, surgical trainees should be required to ‘practice’ prior to performing surgery in order to ensure that the residents are well-prepared. Residents would ‘practice’ by using the da Vinci surgical robot, which the surgeon trainee would control by means of controllers and foot pedals. Although, this proposition is only in the planning stage and therefore, has not yet been implemented, I feel that it could do more harm than good.

Yes, in some cases, practice could be beneficial…but honestly, how do you practice or prepare for surgery? Surgeons and surgical residents should be well-prepared in the sense that they should be extremely well-versed on the patient’s medical and surgical history and should know how to perform surgery based on their real-life experience (i. e. collaborating with/shadowing other surgeons); however, I believe that performing virtual surgery could lead to generalizations, such that once the surgeon or surgical resident begins the actual surgery on the real patient, he/she may discover that it is actually not as simple and straightforward as it looks. Each patient is different from the next in terms of his/her medical and surgery history – his/her gender, ethnicity, age, height, weight, preexisting medical conditions etc. Moreover, surgery is almost never straightforward (I say this from my work experience); in most cases, some sort of complication arises and the surgeon must be able to figure out a reasonable solution under the time constraints. Essentially, surgical trainees would, if anything, be at a disadvantage should they rely on this sort of virtual practice surgery – it could even escalate to an increase in the number of malpractice suits.

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