A systematic review of surgical skills transfer after simulation-based training: laparoscopic cholecystectomy and endoscopy.

Objective: A systematic review to determine whether skills acquired through simulation-based training transfer to the operating room for the procedures of laparoscopic cholecystectomy and endoscopy.

Background: Simulation-based training assumes that skills are directly transferable to the operation room, but only a few studies have investigated the effect of simulation-based training on surgical performance.

Methods: A systematic search strategy that was used in 2006 was updated to retrieve relevant studies.

Surgical services: shaping future directions.

Background: Advances in surgical techniques and anaesthetic practise have facilitated a significant change in the way surgery is currently delivered. In particular, short stay surgery including ambulatory surgery has become the norm for the majority of surgical conditions. However, the planning of surgical services has not always kept pace with nor capitalised on these clinical advances.

Making sense of emergency surgery in New South Wales: a position statement.

Background: Emergency surgery is a major component of the provision of surgical services and makes up a substantial volume of the workload of surgeons in many hospitals. It is often more complex and surgically challenging than elective surgery. However, little attention has been concentrated on the management or resource requirements of emergency surgery.

Applying clinical process redesign methods to planned arrivals in New South Wales hospitals.

*Competing demands of planned and unplanned arrivals present major challenges for hospitals. *Applying clinical process redesign methods to the planned patient journey allows management to recognise the blocks and inefficiencies in the journey and facilitates the development of solutions for improvement. *Redesign of the planned patient journey in New South Wales has promoted the expansion of the extended day-only model of care, reformed the waiting times policy, standardised patient preadmission assessment and preparation, and targeted operating theatre use.

The easiest cut: managing elective surgery in the public sector.

The problem of surgical waiting lists requires multifactorial solutions.

Virtual reality simulators: current status in acquisition and assessment of surgical skills.

Medical technology is currently evolving so rapidly that its impact cannot be analysed. Robotics and telesurgery loom on the horizon, and the technology used to drive these advances has serendipitous side-effects for the education and training arena. The graphical and haptic interfaces used to provide remote feedback to the operator--by passing control to a computer--may be used to generate simulations of the operative environment that are useful for training candidates in surgical procedures.