Trainee Surgeons Safe In Theatres

Surgical procedures in theatre involving junior doctors in training are as safe as operations performed in which trainees have no operative role, according to a study by the University of Limerick.

The project team reviewed data from more than 60,000 surgeries conducted in the US between 2005 and 2008 and found that the rate of incidence of major complication in surgeries with a surgeon-in-training involved was 6% – the same figure for surgeries without a junior doctor involved.

“It is now clear that while the involvement of surgeons-in-training was always anecdotally accepted as safe, this has now been formally investigated and the practice proven to be safe,” said Professor Calvin Coffey, part of the Cleveland Clinic based research team that published the study in the journal ‘Annals of Surgery’.

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