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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;135:485-486
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Editorial

Expert commentary: Cardiothoracic surgical simulation

Professor of Surgery, University of North Carolina; Chairman, American Board of Thoracic Surgery

Received for publication January 11, 2008; accepted for publication January 11, 2008.

^_* Address for reprints: Richard H. Feins, MD, Professor of Surgery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, 3040 Burnett-Womack Building CB 7065, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7065. (Email: rfeins@med.unc.edu).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

The Visioning Simulation Conference held in April 2007 and summarized in this issue may well go down in history as a landmark event for the specialty of cardiothoracic surgery. As stated in this report to our specialty, the Visioning Simulation Conference established a framework by which our specialty can explore the use of simulation to address a broad range of issues facing it. These are the quality of cardiothoracic resident education, ongoing education of the practicing surgeon, skill set acquisition for new technology, improving patient safety, certification, and maintenance of certification. It would be hard to argue that being able to duplicate the essentials of our specialty in a training setting is not going to be essential for our future. The field of surgical simulation, however, is still quite young and there are challenges that remain to be overcome.

Surgical training in cardiothoracic surgery has traditionally relied on an apprenticeship model provided almost exclusively in a hospital setting. . . . [Full Text of this Article]