The New Surgeon: Patient-Centered, Disease-Focused, Technology-Driven, and Team-Oriented

Abstract

Advances in technology have greatly influenced the practice of surgery in multiple ways. Not only is the surgeon of today patient-centered, academically oriented, disease-based, and highly specialized, but the entire spectrum of surgical care now is more technology-driven than ever before. While these facets of surgery are not totally new, the environment on which the surgeon is operating is rapidly changing for the better. Today’s surgeon incorporates genomics, nanotechnology tools, robots, and cameras to provide care and has much greater knowledge of the biology of disease than in the past. This has resulted in a substantial metamorphosis of the surgeon. While the surgical foundation is fundamentally the same, the modus operandi of the practice of surgery has changed substantially. Today’s surgeon is working in a collaborative environment that is heavily influenced by the financial bottom line, multiple layers of bureaucracy and administration, insurance companies, and continuing changing public policies and perceptions pertaining to health. Regardless of the many outside influences, surgeons continue to strive to maintain the basic principles of caring, teaching, mentoring, and advancing the art and science of the surgical discipline above everything else. The transformation in health care and surgical practice has not changed the basic tenets: surgeons care for the sick and injured, surgeons are healers, surgeons strive for perfection, but surgeons respect the rich surgical past and contributions of our teachers. However, in order to be prepared proficiently for the future, surgeons must constantly strive to understand and master the magnitude and complexities of the new body of knowledge, technology, and teamwork essential to optimal health care today. And finally, the training of the new surgeons needs to be addressed. The new surgeons that we are educating must above all be adaptable because we can expect technology to come in successive waves to challenge our prejudice and demand the best in critical understanding of the changing options for patient care. In this chapter, we discuss some of the elements that we believe are paramount in changing “the old surgeon” to “the new surgeon”: one who can navigate nanotechnology and surgical science, yet maintain the skills of comforting a dying patient, as well as working effectively under exceptionally stressful situations such as war, other disasters, and a myriad variety of other emergencies.