Train The Trainers – Erasmus + Surg TTT

The background of our project is the need to improve specialty training in surgical specialities and it’s lacking standardization on the pan-European level.
Specialty training or residency is the period following the medical studies, lasting on average for 6 years. In this project we will analyze the characteristics of the surgical training of general surgery, cardiac-, vascular-, pediatric-, thoracic-, plastic-, surgery, traumatology, orthopedics, ENT, urology and ophtalmology in Spain, Germany, Hungary and in Romania. Previous study revealed that teaching and learning in specialty training is very weak constructed – in Germany e.g. 42% of residents were not fitted with a structured training plan, one third of them got only oral information about the intended course. There was no agreement also between hospitals and residents on learning goals, contents, methods, on rules of mentoring, etc. The situation is similiar also in other countries.
There was an initiative to standardize the closing exams of residents in the European Union:
(http://www.uems.eu/uems-activities/harmonization-of-medical-trainig/cesma)
-but this did’nt change the process of specialty training.
In most European countries the residents are taught by cosultants, mentors, tutors by their own pedagogical practice and they had not been enrolled any program for teaching surgical skills.
Evaluating this situation we are planning to create a program with internationally acceptable suggestions for teaching methods, supporting the practice of European specialty training: Train The Trainers.
A consortium of institutes of surgical education of four European countries: Spain, Germany, Hungary and Romania – will collect the teaching methods and evaluate them. From the most successful ones a uniformed plan will be structured and offered to use in the European Union.