The surgical high dependency unit: an educational resource for surgical trainees.
BACKGROUND
Learning to recognise the seriously ill patient and developing the ability to manage them is a very important part of the education and training of surgeons. A general surgical senior house officer (SHO) spends 4 months on our surgically-led high dependency unit (HDU), as part of their basic surgical training programme.


OBJECTIVE
To assess a surgical high dependency unit as an educational resource.


METHODS
We interrogated our specifically designed database for a 5-year period (April 1997 to March 2002) to look at what a 4-month attachment offered SHOs in respect of: the number of patients treated; their modes of presentation; the specialty; the physiological and operative scores as determined by the POSSUM scoring system; and the interventions that occurred.


CONCLUSIONS
We have demonstrated that a 4-month attachment to a surgical HDU provides a consistent and valuable clinical resource for teaching and learning in surgical education and training.
Ghosh
Samit
S
Department of Surgery, Countess of Chester Hospital, Chester, UK. samitkghosh@hotmail.com
Torella
Francesco
F
de Cossart
Linda
L
D016638:Critical Illness / Q000628:therapy*; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods