With increasing focus on patient safety, the surgical education curriculum must address the inherent conflict between a trainee's right to learn and the patient's expectation of high quality surgery. Is it possible to satisfy both? Since 1997, more than 7,000 cases of laparoscopic surgery have been performed in our hospital. With the increase of cases, 12 trainees have been educated for the past 2 years, and 5 trainees are now under-training. Our Total Laparoscopic Hysterectomy (TLH) is divided into 8 steps, and each trainee can perform until the 7th step according to each one's ability. If the quality of one procedure performed by a trainee is not high, the leading surgeon performs the procedure on behalf of the trainee. The comparison between 2007 and 2008 involving bleeding volume, operating time, uterine weight and incidence of complications showed no significant difference statistically. The result showed our surgical education curriculum for TLH is efficient and safe as well as keeps the operative outcome stable.
