Simulation: a new frontier in surgical education.

Simulation offers a new frontier in surgical education that promises to enhance the current approaches to training. It addresses the operational and fiscal realities of current healthcare deliveries while adhering to principles of educational psychology. Challenges for educators include systematic validation of simulation methods, attracting research funding agencies to support this cause, and development of appropriate funding mechanisms for the sometimes high facility and hardware costs. The greatest challenge, however, is instituting simulation into the minds of a surgical community that is already steeped in a long and entrenched tradition of Halstedian surgical training.