The ASC vision on training
On average, it takes more than 30.000 hours of learning and practising on the job before one is allowed to operate independently and lead a surgical team. Almost four times more than is required to train a helicopterpilot, or three times the time it took Jimi Hendrix to become the world’s best guitar player.
The ‘training on the job’ programs need to be replaced by high quality, time efficient and low cost ‘training off the job’ programs. The rapid progress of digital resources varying from e-books to virtual reality training with haptic feedback, feasibility of telementoring, the advances of artificial intelligence allowing decision support and image guidance and the availability of novel techniques to preserve human tissue provide the components to build a new training off the job curriculum, a ‘New Way of Learning’, which will enable the novice to master abilities and the expert to maintain abilities through a lifelong learning cycle.