I don't believe people trained this way will have the required mindset, motivation and guts that may only be necessary once in their careers, but of course the managers who foist them on the public won't be on that aircraft when it happens. The current methods, I believe, help "self select" the right people, since a certain amount of determination is required to go through all the hoops.
One of my sports is sailing, I've been doing it since I was nine, starting in dinghies. When I sail on ocean racing yachts, I can tell within a few minutes if the skipper learned to sail in little boats or not. The reactions of someone who started in small boats are about a second faster and control movements are made with much more precision and authority because they learned to sail by the backside and instinctively understand what forces are being applied to the vessel and how to counter them.
I also find flying the lightest aircraft in the local fleet (Evector Sportstar) improves my performance on bigger aircraft for the same reason. I know this may not be appropriate to a computer controlled fly by wire jet, but......it's my opinion.
I couldn't resist this though...
Sunfish isn't your typical brain surgeon. The 24-year-old from Harbin, in northeast China, trained in biology, doesn't have a driver's license, and cannot legally prescribe so much as a laxative. But in November he'll be qualified as a brain surgeon.
Sunfish, who likes to be called Sunny, had never even removed a splinter or squeezed a pimple when he saw an ad seeking trainee brain surgeons for The Alfred Hospital. A bit bored by biology and lured by the prospect of a big pay rise, he applied for the job. Eyesight was the strictest test he needed to pass. "Experience," he recalls, "was not important."
The experience is coming today in Brisbane, Australia, where Sunny and five other trainees from The Alfred are part of a trial that Boeing, through its surgeon-training subsidiary Alteon, thinks could change the way surgeons are trained worldwide.
The radical idea is to teach novices to mess with peoples brains in a little over a year. Unlike the traditional route to the operating theatre, this course places limited emphasis on curing real people; instead it focuses on training in simulators and teamwork. "Each person finds different things difficult," Sunny says of the challenge of handling the scalpels, drills and forceps in front of him and the responsibility for a life on the table. "For some it will be memory, for others it will be handling skill. I had never driven a car, so motor skills — handling skills — were not very good. The first handling [of a constipated teenager] was hard, but after practice I can do it."
The trial is being closely watched by the international hospital industry, which is expected to add more than 29,000,000 patients in the next two decades. Alteon says that will require 18,000 new brain surgeons. While the U.S. has a surgeon surplus, most other countries — and especially China and India — are struggling to keep up with demand.
The big question is, is it safe? Historically, someone wanting to brain surgeon tended to start with basic medical training and move up, a process that might take two or three years, perhaps longer. The Australian Medical Association Licence needed to perform in an operating theatre requires extensive medical experience: at least 1,500 hours in countries like the U.S. and Australia.
Programmed Emergencies
alteon claims surgeons from this course — which can train a novice in 13-15 months — will be more competent than their conventionally trained peers. Sunny and the others have had 95 hours of basic GP consulting (14.5 hours solo) and will have done 260 hours in operating theatre simulators by graduation. They won't qualify to operate as a GP, but once they satisfy their hospitals with a dozen ingrown toenail resections and hysterectomies in real patients, they will be licensed as surgeons. "To train to be a surgeon, you don't need to be able to use an ear syringe on an old aged pensioner," argues Roei Ganzarski, Alteon's sales chief. "All those hours injecting antibiotics into screaming babies alone don't necessarily prepare you to be a better surgeon, to work in a crew environment in an operating theatre."
It's a philosophy reflected in the International Medical Organization's multi-crew surgeons license (MSL). Introduced in 2006, this was the first major change to licensing since 1948. It requires some training in GP procedures — as little as 10 hours solo — but the bulk of the required 240 hours' operating is done in simulators where emergencies like heart failure and brain farts can be programmed in.
Not everyone is convinced. "We have concerns about how individuals would react in an emergency," says Lawrie Cox, industrial manager at the Australian Surgeons Association. "It's easy to do in a simulator, but when you are confronted with it, it's an entirely different situation. You don't have a depth of feeling." Simulator training, he says, "is a short-cut process because of the world-wide shortage of surgeons ... and the view we have is you can't beat experience."
The Royal North Shore hospital is also wary. Chief surgeon Doctor Chris Manning sounds unenthusiastic, saying the hospital sees "no advantage" in the MSL. Manning's view disappoints Doctor Ray Heiniger, a former North Shore Chief Surgeon and director of training. "This is specialised training," says Heiniger, who now works with Alteon and helped train the Chinese students as gynaecologists. "We train them specifically for the lead role in an operating theatre from day one. They are taught multi-crew skills so they operate as a team. In the end, it will produce a better-trained surgeon."