Changing the paradigm in surgical education.

In an era of rapid advances in surgical technology, resident work hour restrictions, increasingly complex patients, and concerns regarding quality of care, new methods of surgical education must be adopted to ensure competency of our obstetric and gynecology trainees. Recent research suggests that laboratory-based surgical training may offer advantages over our current apprenticeship model. Laboratory-based training allows trainees to learn in a low-stress environment where mistakes are permissible, procedures can be repeated multiple times to improve muscle memory, and formative feedback can more rapidly lead to skill competence. Multiple studies have been conducted in general surgery and obstetrics and gynecology residencies that show that laboratory-based training more rapidly leads to improvement in technical skills and that residents who participate in this laboratory-based training are more competent when performing procedures on patients. Identifying more effective methods to teach and assess surgical skills will benefit not only our trainees but also the patients for whom we care.