Abstract

SUSHURTA – THE PIONEER OF SIMULATION IN SURGICAL EDUCATION

Dabhade Kavita* and Sakharkar Bhagyashri

Abstract

Introduction: Surgery is a medical speciality that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate or to treat a pathological conditions, disease or injury, to improve bodily function to repair unwanted ruptured area. It is a technical field which includes different tasks ranging from simple wound closure to highly complex diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Achieving surgical competence is a complex process that involves the attainment of knowledge, judgement, professionalism and surgical skills. A surgeon needs repeated practice of the surgical procedures to acquire the surgical skills. In recent era, simulation has come into custom as a method of teaching the technical skills to surgical trainees. Simulation is a model of a real activity created for learning purpose and simulator is a machine designed to provide a realistic imitation for this purpose. The expectations that the surgical trainee will acquire all necessary skills in a purely clinical environment are no longer realistic. Simulation offers the benefits like safe environment for practice and error resulting in improved patient safety and learning efficiency. For simulation, a wide variety of models are available from animal or cadaveric models to virtual reality simulators. Method: Pubmed database is searched to write this article. Results: Although the modern era has developed many synthetic simulators to acquire surgical skills, the root of the concept lies 1000 BC in Ancient Indian system of medicine and surgery. Discussion: Sushruta was the first to introduce simulation in surgical education as Yogya. He is the inventor of simulators.

Keywords: Yogya, Seevan, Computer simulators, Simulator models, Bench Top Models, Virtual reality.