A small team committed to change, undertook a pragmatic appraisal of what was meaningful and appropriate for students in the final phase of their medical training. It became clear that surgical education should extend beyond the theatre and incorporated the patients’ surgical journey. We propose an alternative way centred, not on isolated skills development or instruction, but through a process whereby students becoming part of the patients’ surgical journey. In this way, skills, information, and instruction become situated within meaningful and purposeful activities. Students will follow patients from admittance to discharge studying operational procedures, leadership, communication, teamwork, and risk management within an organized real time | real life manner. We feel it is vital that students have the opportunity to engage in a more holistic approach across cognitive, social and affective domains. As a result, we developed a new educational schema that consists of six core features that we believe add value over existing teaching/learning approaches.
- A patient-centric approach to learning, motivated by social relations.
- A focus on cycles of learning (learning flow) as opposed to learning episodes. In this way we aim to conceive learning as a continuous dynamic flow over time, rather than being static and time bound.
- Exposure to the ill-structured, complexities of real time | real life experiences as opposed to the traditional reliance on static reusable resources.
- The use of Point of View (POV) as a learning method. In this way students align with the significant people/roles as opposed to the traditional 3rd person observer.
- The deployment of digital technology to craft seamless cycles of meaningful contact and non-contact experiences.
- A focus on learning as professional practice.