Establishing a surgical skills laboratory and dissection curriculum for neurosurgical residency training

Surgical education has been forced to evolve from the principles of its initial inception, in part due to external pressures brought about through changes in modern health care. Despite these pressures that can limit the surgical training experience, training programs are being held to higher standards of education to demonstrate and document trainee competency through core competencies and milestones. One of the methods used to augment the surgical training experience and to demonstrate trainee proficiency in technical skills is through a surgical skills laboratory. The authors have established a surgical skills laboratory by acquiring equipment and funding from nondepartmental resources, through institutional and private educational grants, along with product donations from industry. A separate educational curriculum for junior- and senior-level residents was devised and incorporated into the neurosurgical residency curriculum. The initial dissection curriculum focused on cranial approaches, with spine and peripheral nerve approaches added in subsequent years. The dissections were scheduled to maximize the use of cadaveric specimens, experimenting with techniques to best preserve the tissue for repeated uses. A survey of residents who participated in at least 1 year of the curriculum indicated that participation in the surgical skills laboratory translated into improved understanding of anatomical relationships and the development of technical skills that can be applied in the operating room. In addition to supplementing the technical training of surgical residents, a surgical skills laboratory with a dissection curriculum may be able to help provide uniformity of education across different neurosurgical training programs, as well as provide a tool to assess the progression of skills in surgical trainees.