A Saturday morning in theatre
A training session held in the theatres at St Andrew's War Memorial Hospital on a Saturday morning, run with Stryker and Medacta International.
Running these sessions at the weekend, in real theatres rather than a lecture room, means the setup, instrumentation and sequence of an operation can be worked through properly without competing with an operating list.
With thanks to QUT, The University of Queensland and the ARC Training Centre for Joint Biomechanics.
How technical training sessions work
Surgical technique is learned by doing it, and the point of a dedicated training session is to separate the learning of a technique from the pressure of treating a patient. Working in a theatre with the real instrument trays, the real implant systems and the staff who normally set them up allows each step to be stopped, repeated and questioned. In an actual operating list none of that is possible, because the list has to run to time and the patient's interests come first.
A session like this generally covers patient positioning, how the trays are laid out and in what order instruments are handed over, how the implant system is assembled and what the alternatives are at each decision point, and the sequence of the operation from access through to closure. Running it on a Saturday means theatres are available and nobody is being pulled away from clinical work. The device companies supply the implant systems and instrumentation being taught, which is why sessions of this kind are normally run with industry involvement.
Why training continues after qualification
Orthopaedic training in Australia is long, but it does not end at qualification. Implant systems change, instruments are redesigned, and techniques that were standard a decade ago are superseded. A surgeon who adopts a new system has to learn its particular steps, and the registrars, fellows, nursing staff and theatre teams who work alongside them have to learn it too, because an operation depends on the whole team knowing the sequence.
Sessions held in a hospital's own theatres with its own staff address that directly. They also give surgeons in training structured time on technical skills that is protected from service demands. Involvement from the universities and the biomechanics training centre connects the teaching to the research side, so that questions raised at the bench and questions raised in theatre inform one another. Treatment for any individual patient is decided on their own clinical assessment. Individual results vary.