Changing face of trauma and surgical training in a developing country: A literature review

Trauma continues to be the major cause of disability and death globally and surgeons are often involved in immediate care. However there has been an exponential decrease in the number of the trained trauma surgeons. The purpose of the current review article is to summarize the published literature pertaining to trauma education in postgraduate surgical training programmes internationally and in a developing country as Pakistan. Several electronic databases like MEDLINE, PubMed, Google scholar and PakMediNet were searched using the keywords 'trauma education' or 'trauma training' AND 'postgraduate medical education', 'surgery residency training', 'surgery residents' and 'surgeons'. The current training in most surgical residency programmes, locally and globally, is suboptimal. Change in trauma management protocols, and decrease in volume of trauma cases results in variable and/ or inadequate exposure and hands-on experience of the surgical trainees in operative and non-operative management of trauma. This warrants collaborative measures for integration of innovative educational interventions at all levels of the surgical educational programmes.