How Surgical Robotics Transform the Development of Expertise in Modern Operating Rooms

Abstract

Current models of the clinical surgical process, and as a result, surgical education, present robot-assisted surgery (RAS)1 as a simple sequential step in the evolution of surgical treatment from laparoscopy. In an ongoing research program on robot-assisted surgery this paper presents data from the first, ethnographic, research phase demonstrating that the requisite skills for success in the robot-assisted environment are altered from those expected within the laparoscopic domain, and as a result, the training paths and novice-to-expert progression trajectories are noticeably dissimilar.