The Neurovascular Disease Management Course: a Medical Student Opportunity for Early Exposure and Technical Development in Vascular Neurosurgery.

BACKGROUND

As endovascular neurosurgery techniques continue to evolve, medical students in the United States have widely varying exposures to the field, particularly with respect to opportunities for hands-on experiences. Current medical school curricula could benefit from a novel and adaptive course on vascular neurosurgery to increase student exposure earlier in their training.

METHODS

We launched a yearly hands-on vascular neurosurgery course for medical students and residents. The day-long course is a combination of lectures focused on neurovascular disease and management accompanied by hands-on sessions where students practiced fundamental microsurgery and angiography techniques using real microscopes and angiography simulators. We surveyed the students before and after each of the two courses. The survey following the second annual course included quiz questions the students had not previously seen.

RESULTS

Over two courses, we had 149 attendees, 71.8% of which were first and second-year medical students representing fifteen institutions. The average survey completion rate was 41.4% for the four surveys across the two courses. Attendees' interest in pursuing a surgical specialty (t= 1.815, p=0.039) along with their comfort with neuroanatomy (t= 8.780, p=< 0.001) and neurosurgical disease (t= 6.133, p=< 0.001) was significantly elevated after the completion of the second course. Responses to the post-survey showed a good grasp of the fundamentals with 68% of attendees answering 70% of the quiz questions correctly.

CONCLUSION

An interactive course on vascular neurosurgery may be an effective vehicle to provide medical students with exposure to the field and the opportunity to learn the fundamentals.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.