Surgical Education

Surgical Education: Theorising an Emerging Domain delineates surgical (as opposed to medical) education as a new and emerging field of academic enquiry. This reflects profound changes in healthcare training and practice on an international basis. As such, this book introduces, examines and explores the contribution of selected concepts and theories to surgical learning and practice. The first four chapters consider core facets of surgical education, such as simulation, while subsequent chapters take a key idea, often well known in another field, and examine its relevance to surgical education.

Of course, performing invasive procedures is no longer the exclusive preserve of 'traditional' surgeons. Boundaries between surgery and the interventional specialties (radiology, cardiology, intensive care) are becoming increasingly blurred, especially as technology continues to expand. Changing work patterns and explosive technological development mark this out as a major growth area. New educational approaches (e.g. the use of simulation) are emerging. And all clinical practice is a team activity, where clinicians from many specialties (medicine, nursing, allied professions) come together with shared goals. For all the above groups, and their patients, education (teaching, training, learning and assessment) is of crucial importance.

Yet the unique characteristics of surgical education have not previously been addressed from an educational perspective, nor have its possibilities as a new research domain been mapped. The domain needs to be theorised and its epistemological foundations established. There is thus both a need and a market for a definitive work in this area, aimed at surgeons, other clinicians, non-clinicians, educators, and others interested in this new domain.

Heather Fry is Director (Education and Participation) at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).  Prior to joining HEFCE in 2008 she worked at universities in England and overseas, including at Imperial College London, and the Institute of Education and Barts and London Medical and Dental School, both University of London.  She also worked for many years as education faculty at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.  She has taught and researched in a number of areas, including being joint founder and co-director of the UK's first master's in Surgical Education at Imperial, with Roger Kneebone. Her expertise is in the policy of higher and professional education and facilitating learning in these two contexts. She has published extensively across her varied areas of interest.

 Roger Kneebone is Reader in Surgical Education at Imperial College London. Roger trained first as a general surgeon, then changed course to become a general practitioner and GP trainer in a large group practice near Bath. In 2003, after completing his PhD in surgical education, Roger joined Imperial College London. His current research focuses on using simulation to contextualise clinical learning, and on mapping clinical environments from a pedagogical perspective. He has developed innovative approaches to learning and assessing clinical procedures (using hybrid combinations of models and simulated patients) and is currently developing lightweight, portable yet realistic surgical environments for training and assessment. Roger publishes extensively and directs Imperial's Masters in Education (M Ed) in Surgical Education.