Surgical skills and COVID-19 pandemic: Impact and way forward

Abstract

The Covid-SARS-19 pandemic has changed the global ways of life, impacting various domains of living such as social life, national economies, work, and temporary curtailing of opportunities in surgical training. 1,2 The temporary cessation of skill courses and conferences by the organisations and professional bodies have impacted training of future surgical workforce. In this issue Ms Gowda et al. 3 report, impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the technical skills of urology trainees attending national BOOTS camp. 4 The study fi nds a detrimental effect of pandemic on the technical skills of trainees, whereas a similar study by Etheridge et al. from Singapore 5 showed an improvement in non-technical and team man-agement skills. Improvement in teamwork during disas-ters has also been observed in other area. 6,7 Together with other publications, the published literature provides background for the future policy making in surgical training. The observations reported by the authors suggest that lack of exposure to real-life surgical skills particularly in complex tasks such as laparoscopic suturing has resulted in poor technical skills gain by the trainees. 8 The role of simulation can help in retaining basic surgical skills and principles upto a point, but further re fi nement is only pos-sible through operating on patients in surgical operating room environment. A drop in upto 60% of operative volume based on a review of operating logbooks of trainees in Europe and USA us idea are likely the