Surgical Training: the European Minimally Invasive Skills Education Model in Urology

The introduction of laparoscopic surgery has several advantages including shorter hospital stay, less pain, and smaller scars. This new surgical technique, however, provoked a paradigm shift in training modality. It was a difficult task to acquire these complex surgical skills in demanding and constantly changing operating room settings due to the increasing skill gap, limited time, and resources. This led to the development of proficiency-based progression (PBP) training programs outside of the operating room, with emphasis on the objective and validated performance metrics. The program can be applied to provide performance feedback to students and in tracking trainee's development to make sure that predefined achievement benchmarks are achieved before students perform surgery on real patients. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that skills acquired in these training programs transfer to the operating room when performing laparoscopic surgery. We suggest an international implementation of these training programs in order to bring forth confident and skilled surgeons eventually leading to an improved healthcare.