title: The future of minimal access surgery.
abstract: It seems likely that the future of minimal access therapy will be driven in part by the forces which have shaped its early development. There will continue to be a movement of care from the hospital, where costs are relatively apparent, to the community, where they are hidden and difficult to determine. Hospital stays will be shorter and there will be fewer beds. Patients and their representatives will want more information about the procedures performed on them and their outcomes. Surgical operations will increasingly be performed by highly skilled experts with less and less service delivered by trainees. The duration and intensity of the work of theatre teams will tend to be reduced for health and safety reasons. New technologies, both predictable and unpredictable, will alter practice. These pressures and trends give us a hint of what the future might look like but the operation of chance means that any attempt at prediction contains a sizeable element of fantasy. What follows is a fantasy of a possible future.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fowler
mesh_terms: D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000451:nursing / Q000639:trends*; D009871:Operating Room Nursing / Q000639:trends*