Are Surgical Trainees Still Needed in the OR Now That Robots Can Assist Surgeons?

In routine surgeries, trainees worked with anesthesiologists, scrub technicians, and nurses to position and sedate the patient while preparing the surgical field with lights and instruments.

An IEEE Spectrum report specified that surgical training was carried out the same way for almost a hundred years before the arrival of robots.

In many circumstances, the trainee then made the incision, cauterized blood vessels to stop blood loss, and positioned clamps to expose the organ or field of interest.

That's frequent when the surgeon came, put on his scrub, and took charge. However, operations usually needed four hands, so the trainees assisted the senior surgeons by suctioning blood and moving tissue, slowly bringing the lead role as they gained experience.

Surgical Robots Becoming Predominant in the US

The surgeon would scrub and leave for the paperwork when the primary surgical task was accomplished. Then, the trainee would do whatever stitching, gluing, or stapling was necessary for the patient to be whole again.

That old system where trainees were always in charge of several hours of each surgery does not work in robotic surgery.

Surgical robots have become increasingly predominant in hospitals since the da Vinci Surgical System was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

The da Vinci robot from Intuitive Surgical, a Silicon Valley-based company, dominates the market today. This tech firm has over 6,700 machines in hospitals worldwide. Intuitive says in the US, da Vinci machines are employed in 100 percent of top-rated cancer, urology, gynecology, and gastroenterology hospitals.

Robotic Surgery

There is a variety of specialized robotic systems, though, from other firms in fields like neurology, ophthalmology, and orthopedics.

In a Mayo Clinic report detailed robotic surgery, the most crucial times are at the beginning and the end when the surgical group "docks" a large robot to the patient.

Da Vinci's present generation means positioning four robotic arms tipped with surgical tools and making ports" for such tools by inserting metal cylinders into the patient's abdomen through small incisions.

The first port allows the camera entry; the ports are used for scalpels, graspers, cauterizing instruments, staplers, or other tools.

Trainees as Optional Assistants in the OR?

The moment the robotic arms are positioned and instruments inserted, the surgeon "scrubs out" and takes up a position about 15 feet far from the patient in the immersive da Vinci control console, which offers a stereoscopic view.

The surgeon's hands are on a pair of two multipurpose controllers that can move and rotate the mechanisms in all directions; by shifting between instruments, the surgeon's two hands can effortlessly control all four robotic arms.

Studies have shown that hospitals that adopted this technology have most frequently turned trainees into optional assistants in the operating room. This means they start practicing as real and actual surgeons minus adequate skill.

Changing this trend would necessitate sweeping institutional change, which is not expected to occur anytime soon.

Information about robotic surgery is shown on Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Robotics Medicine & Health in Science Times.