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Introduction: Microsurgery courses, taught external to surgical training programs, are essential for acquiring the high level of technical skill required for clinical proficiency.
Methods: The Frankfurt microsurgery course is a 5-day, intensive course that teaches arterial and venous anastomosis using end-to-end, end-to-side, one-way-up, continuous-suture, and vessel graft techniques. During the course, the instructor records the level of skill (in-course data) achieved by each trainee by assessing anastomosis completion and patency. Demographic information is also collected. Post-course trainees are invited to complete an online survey (post-course data) to get their opinions of the courses’ effectiveness.
Results: The in-course “skill achievement” and post-course “course effectiveness” data are presented below. In-course data: 94.8 and 59.9% of participants completed patent end-to-end arterial and venous anastomoses, respectively, while 85.4% performed a patent end-to-side anastomosis. 96.1 and 57.1% of participants who attempted arterial and venous anastomoses using the one-way-up technique were successful, as were 90.9% of those attempting continuous-suture technique. Patent venous grafts were performed by 54.7% of participants.
Post-course data: All respondents indicated significant improvement of their microsurgical skills after taking the course. 66.7% of respondents considered the full-time presence of the instructor to be the most valuable aspect of the course. All respondents would highly recommend the course to colleagues.
Conclusion: The microcourse significantly increased trainees’ clinical microsurgery skills, confidence, and the number of clinical cases they perform. Of all the anastomosis techniques taught, venous anastomosis and grafting were the most difficult to learn. The presence of a full-time experienced instructor was most important.
Introduction: Encouraged by the change in licensing regulations the practical professional skills in Germany received a higher priority and are taught in medical schools therefore increasingly. This created the need to standardize the process more and more. On the initiative of the German skills labs the German Medical Association Committee for practical skills was established and developed a competency-based catalogue of learning objectives, whose origin and structure is described here.
Goal of the catalogue is to define the practical skills in undergraduate medical education and to give the medical schools a rational planning basis for the necessary resources to teach them.
Methods: Building on already existing German catalogues of learning objectives a multi-iterative process of condensation was performed, which corresponds to the development of S1 guidelines, in order to get a broad professional and political support.
Results: 289 different practical learning goals were identified and assigned to twelve different organ systems with three overlapping areas to other fields of expertise and one area of across organ system skills. They were three depths and three different chronological dimensions assigned and the objectives were matched with the Swiss and the Austrian equivalent.
Discussion: This consensus statement may provide the German faculties with a basis for planning the teaching of practical skills and is an important step towards a national standard of medical learning objectives.
Looking ahead: The consensus statement may have a formative effect on the medical schools to teach practical skills and plan the resources accordingly.