(402) PROBLEMS OF ENDONEUROSURGERY EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY IN TURKEY

摘要

Endoneurosurgery consists of neurological operations performed using an endoscope. Unliketraditional surgery operations, natural body cavities are used as entry points, hence inflicting minimumdamage to the patient. These operations are considered as minimal invasive surgeries (or MIS),where surgeons see the operation area in two-dimensional view on the monitor and perform theoperation based on that view. Studies show that MIS causes minimal harm to human body andreduces the death risk and that these surgeries are at least as safe as those performed usingmicroscopes. Despite having certain advantages, they also come with certain problems, one of whichis that the endoscopic view is two-dimensional, not three; in other words, since endoneurosurgery isperformed via the images from the endoscope, the surgeon's perception should enable them totransform those images seen through the endoscope and convert them mentally to their correctanatomical models. In that concern, lack of depth perception can cause serious injuries, even resultingin deaths if not dealt with in advance by training. To be successful in such an environment, thesurgeon has to gain critical skills. Hence, the education programs of surgery and endoneurosurgeryhas unique problems. The main aim of this study is to better understand the problems ofendoneurosurgery education in Turkey. For this, a survey study is conducted with 31 participants, whoare either currently enrolled in endoneurosurgery education programs in Turkey or experts in the field.Supportively semi-structured individual interviews are also conducted with 5 participants. This data iscollected to better understand the methods being used in these programs, their problems and theparticipants' preferred methods to be used. Additionally, the participants' attitudes towards are alsoinvestigated regarding the use of new technologies to enhance the current education programs. Theresults indicate that, in Turkey, endoneurosurgery training programs are still mostly offered intraditional ways while other educational methods are used in an extremely limited manner. Mainproblems of integrating new technologies into these education programs are highlighted as: the mostwidely used educational method for endoneurosurgery in Turkey is the traditional one, see one-doone-teach one, provided in the operating theatre on real patients with an extremely limited practicealternative for the assistants. To improve the practice educators and trainees are willing to usealternative education environments, such as virtual reality and box training. However, they are notavailable and there are no curriculum integration models for these technologies.