gms | German Medical Science

Aim: To show how surgical skills training can be successfully integrated in a curriculum even with large number of students

Summary of work: The new clinical curriculum for medicine at the University of Hamburg (KliniCuM ) has been successfully implemented for three trimesters now. Several teaching modalities have been integrated including PBL, traditional lectures, bed-side teaching and others. Training of basic surgical (suturing) skills was considered an important learning goal in the operative field. Thus a 2 day suturing skills training was integrated in the 2 week course in general surgery with focus on practical application of basic suturing techniques on skin models. This was enhanced by another 3 hour course with application of these techniques on pig feet. Finally suturing was tested in the final OSCE exam at the end of the trimester. A total of 120 students per trimester was successfully exposed to this training each trimester. The course was the most positive in student evaluation in the entire curriculum in the surgical field.

Summary of results: basic surgical skills can successfully be trained even with large number of students. Skills training is being evaluated very positively by students.