Surgery for beginners | |
Basic surgical skills manual. Iain Skinner. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2000 (234 pp). ISBN: 0 074 70608 X. |
As with most professions
which have a technical base, surgery has a language of its own which seems mysterious, challenging and threatening to the outsider. "Cutting edge needles", "Kelly retractors" or "Adson forceps" represent a language which is foreign to medical students and graduates early in their careers. Iain Skinner's book goes a long way into translating this "surgical language" and provides explanations for its use so that clinicians might be assisted in acquiring basic surgical skills, irrespective of their ultimate specialty. Skinner has only recently completed his surgical training and has been involved in the teaching of basic surgical skills at Melbourne University; consequently, he is well versed in the needs of potential readers of this manual. The book is topical in that "skills laboratories" have become a necessity in the education of students and new graduates. It is written and illustrated in a "cookbook" fashion which makes it easy to follow, especially for those starting from a low knowledge base. This style is also one of its weaknesses as it often falls short on explanations of "Why is it so?". I found myself looking for an explanation for why the design of vascular clamps allows the closure of a vessel to occlude its flow but does not cause crushing or intimal damage. The author apologises for confining himself only to instruments used in general surgery and not in the other areas of surgery. This, of course, reflects his own experience as a general surgeon, but is an inaccurate observation, as the manual addresses the skills which are common to all surgery in general and not specific to the surgery of the abdomen or vessels. This is one of the book's strengths, and, if it were to be re-edited, my recommendation would be to incorporate more of the basic skills of the other surgical subspecialties. At $43.95 the manual is good value and should find a niche among medical students and new graduates. James Toouli
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