Surgical Education Dilemma

With the advent of open, laparoscopic, robotic, and now the potential for autonomous surgical techniques, both residents and seasoned surgeons face a significant educational challenge. Mastery in modern surgery now demands proficiency across all these approaches to achieve true expertise.

Ethan Mollick touches on this dilemma in his recent book Co-Intelligence (living and working with AI):

Under tremendous time pressure, residents had to choose between learning traditional surgery skills or figuring out how to use these new robots on their own time.

While many doctors ended up undertrained, those who wanted to learn how to use robotic surgery equipment turned away from official channels.

They did their own “shadow learning” by watching YouTube channels or training more on live patients than they probably should have.

This same sort of training crisis is going to spread as AI automates more and more basic tasks.

Even as experts become the only people who can effectively check the work of ever more capable AIs, we are in danger of stopping the pipeline of experts.

What should surgeons prioritize learning and mastering in this digital and AI era? Basic surgical skills, laparoscopy, robotic surgery, or AI and machine learning?