Basic surgical skills in medical schools

Prof. Dr. Murtadha Almusafer

Is it mandatory to include practical procedures and basic surgical skills in the medical school curriculum?

It seems that including the basic interventional skills create safe, professional, and competent junior doctors. ^1,2,3,4

Competencies in basic procedural and surgical skills are required for all junior doctors regardless of final specialty as they may face critical patients in areas away from hospital and injuries and wounding even of one of their family members and they may be embarrassed when these skills are not well considered. The United Kingdom was one of the first countries which raised  such a necessity to train undergraduates with practical surgical procedures. ^{5 & 6}

The Society of Academic and Research Surgery (SARS) highlighted the need for high quality undergraduate surgical education in 2005. ⁷ Despite that concern still the undergraduate exposure to the surgical skills remains diluted by a crowded theoretical contemporary curriculum. ⁸

Core attributes common to specialties, such as communication skills, are becoming increasingly dominant, despite the General Medical Council (GMC) emphasizing the requirement of all newly qualified doctors to be competent in the basic technical procedures [9]

The practical skills like skin suturing, basic wound care, and administration of local anesthetic are essential and required in most specialties, yet most of newest doctors are poorly equipped in these procedure-based surgical skills. ⁶

Whilst it is generally known that most undergraduate medical students do not go on to become surgeons, and specific surgical skills are not a priority in the undergraduate syllabus, the acquisition of basic, nationally recommended skills is now deemed an essential outcome of undergraduate medical training. ⁹

The University of Basrah, College of Medicine had been considered this issue during the last years and analyzed feedbacks from the graduated students and Basrah Health Directorate and started to arrange courses to learn undergraduates the basic skills like skin suturing.