Top Gun
The Top Gun Laparoscopic Skills and Suturing programs
are meant to provide an effective and rapid development
platform for skills acquisition and suturing excellence
in the videoscopic environment. It proudly patterns
itself after the training methodology that forms the
core curriculum of the Navy’s Top Gun school for fighter
pilots. This includes a deconstruction of complex
tasks to their most elemental level, the execution
of preparatory drills to facilitate complex task execution,
teamwork building, and the use of metrics to objectively
evaluate performance. There is a detailed and precise
suturing algorithm that is taught. It is stressed
to the surgeon that excellence is not built on just
talent but also on the consistent execution of superior
tactics and techniques. If this algorithm is executed
to the letter, participants can achieve success consistently.
It also features an extended curriculum that promotes
continued expansion of skill sets. There is Level
I, the basic skills and suturing course, followed
by the Level II, the Master’s course, and lastly Level
III, the intracorporeal anastomosis course. All of
these programs have large databases that can give
the participant feedback on their skill level in comparison
to their peers. The course also is very cost effective
because it can be done without animal models using
low cost tabletop simulators. It also taps into the
competitive nature of surgeons to be successful no
matter what the cost that has to be paid. Without
a doubt this course taps into the surgeon’s emotional
fabric in order to inspire participants to humble
themselves and embrace the system. Great surgeons
are not born but rather they are made by a commitment
and willingness to play the price for excellence.
Finally, each time a course is conducted, it honors
the men and women who defend our country and make
the extraordinary seem routine. With the ever increasing
recognition of the beneficial crossover of aerospace
industry training and error reduction methodology
to the surgical arena and considering the common ground
challenges of United States Naval aviation in the
Vietnam era and the current state of affairs in minimally
invasive surgery, the stage has been set for the adoption
of the Navy’s Top Gun training methodology to be applied
to empower surgeons to intracorporeal suture. For
more information about these individual programs,
please click on the provided links.
