Anaesthesia and the undergraduate medical curriculum

Abstract

pathways for neurobehavioural testing or management of patients with perioperative NCD. Ultimately, adoption of the recommendations by Evered and colleagues 7 will depend on the greater community of investigators that study cognitive disorders after anaesthesia and surgery, and the policy of journals that publish their work. Other groups have attempted to standardize the diagnosis of POCD to allow comparisons of results between studies. 13 Despite the latter efforts, the criteria for detecting and defining POCD have remained variable and inconsistent over the ensuing quarter of a century since their opinions were published. Evered and colleagues 7 provide a thorough and thoughtful approach to address how to define cognitive changes after anaesthesia and surgery. Nonetheless, with the exception of delirium, neurocognitive decline after anaesthesia and surgery currently remains a research observation.

Impact of a Preclinical Medical Student Anesthesiology Elective on the Attitudes and Perceptions of Medical Students Regarding Anesthesiology

“…Consequently, practicing anesthesiologists seldom provide direct classroom instruction, as other specialties have more “ownership” over certain topics. 7–9 A similar pattern has been observed in Canadian medical schools, where one estimate of median teaching hours from anesthesiologists was approximately 2 hours of the total didactic education in 2017. 10 , 11 …”

Teaching Practical Skills in Anesthesia, Intensive Care, Emergency and Pain Medicine—What Is Really Relevant for Medical Students? Results of a German National Survey of Nearly 3000 Anesthesiologists

“…Others were considered to be of less importance. These findings are in accordance with the results of other studies, with a prioritization of theoretical but also of practical skills both in the field of anesthesiology and intensive care medicine [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. The overall high relevance of practical skills in this field underscores the importance of our specialty for interdisciplinary student education.…”

“…The insight that highly specific practical skills from our specialty should not consume time resources in medical school and should rather remain part of postgraduate training certainly applies to the curricula in other countries as well. It is important to use the limited time resources of medical studies for good and repeated teaching and testing of basic key skills rather than superficial training of very specific measures [ 24 ].…”

Anaesthetic National Teaching Programme for Students (ANTPS)

“…As most doctors’ first and only exposure to anaesthesia is in medical school, it is important to maximise student exposure. In addition to aiding recruitment into the specialty, thereby improving the talent pool,4 10 71 72 exposure through a formal teaching programme will allow students to appreciate anaesthetics,14 stimulating deeper learning57 and better preparation for exams and life as a foundation doctor. Students who completed our programme reported more insight into anaesthesia and thereby considered anaesthesia as more of an interesting career prospect for them (table 4), reinforcing the need for a national programme beyond undergraduate anaesthetic education.…”