Surgical teaching in urology: patient safety and educational value of ‘LIVE’ and ‘SEMI-LIVE’ surgical demonstrations

PURPOSE: To evaluate the opinion of urologists and their audience regarding patient safety and educational value of live surgical demonstrations (LSD) and semi-live surgical demonstrations (semi-LSD). METHODS: Following the ‘2017 Challenges in Endourology’ meeting, a survey addressing patient safety and the educational value of LSD and semi-LSD was disseminated online to all participants. Survey outcomes of LSD and semi-LSD were compared. RESULTS: All 279 respondents attended both LSD and semi-LSD. Overall, 53% of said respondents stated that patient safety was always the highest priority for LSD, while 74% noted the same for semi-LSD. The complication risk in LSD was perceived equal by 57% of the respondents when compared to cases of similar difficulty in routine practice, while 38% perceived it as a greater risk. For semi-LSD, the complication risk was perceived equal by 84%, while 5% perceived it to be a greater risk in comparison to general practice. On a scale from 0 (no value) to 10 (highly valuable), the average educational value of LSD and semi-LSD was rated 8.4 and 8.3, respectively. A substantial percentage of the surgeons who perform LSD express concerns that live surgery is not the optimal setting to ensure patient safety. CONCLUSIONS: LSD remains a popular tool for surgical education among urologists and their audience. However, patient safety remains a concern and is perceived less of a concern for semi-LSD. The educational value of LSD and semi-LSD was scored equally high. Therefore, we should consider to advocate the use of semi-LSD more often. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00345-018-2291-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.