Imperial department receives prestigious surgery accreditation

Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology recognised by American College of Surgeons<em> - News </em>

By Laura Gallagher
Tuesday 15 April 2008

The work of an Imperial College London department which provides surgical education for healthcare personnel has been recognised by the American College of Surgeons (ACS).

The department carries out training for a wide variety of people, from undergraduates learning how to carry out basic procedures, to surgeons practicing keyhole surgery.

The Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology is one of the first centres outside North America to achieve accreditation by the ACS, which is dedicated to improving the care of surgical patients and safeguarding standards of care.

The department carries out training for a wide variety of people, from undergraduates learning how to carry out basic procedures, to surgeons practicing keyhole surgery. It also develops new methods and technologies to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of surgical operations and surgical training.

Accreditation means that the department joins a network of 26 accredited institutes including the Surgical Education and Activities Lab at Duke University Medical Center and the Department of Surgery Education Institute at Stanford.

The new honour recognises the innovative work that the department has carried out over the last decade. These include pioneering a way of making the experience of carrying out 'virtual' procedures more realistic. For example, when trainee doctors use prosthetic skin to practice stitching up a wound it is attached to an actor pretending to be a patient. This means that the trainees have to learn how to communicate with the patient whilst carrying out their technical work.

The team has also led the way in putting computer simulators in a realistic setting. When trainee surgeons carry out virtual operations, using real surgical instruments linked to images on a computer screen, the equipment is arranged around a model body, so that the virtual patient looks and feels very similar to a real one.

Recently, the department has been developing a system using state of the art robotics and navigation surgery to help train doctors for an operation to remove prostate cancers. This system aims to improve the accuracy of the surgical technique and reduce the chance of complications like nerve injury.

Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, Head of Section, Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology, led the bid for accreditation. He said: "We hope that our involvement in this ever-expanding network of educational centres will help us to enhance our surgical education programme and further develop our international collaborations. Gaining status as an ACS Accredited Education Institute is a great achievement for everyone in the department and for Imperial College."

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