More than 1.2 million patients undergo anaesthesia and surgery in the Netherlands. This minor offers students an integrated perspective on the multidisciplinary perioperative care and management of surgical patients.
On the one hand, there will be an emphasis in this minor on the technical side, in which:
- Students will learn how to integrate their knowledge of human anatomy with surgical anatomy in the theatre and radiological anatomy through a number of imaging modalities.
- Training is done in a high tech simulation facility with specific perioperative procedures.
- The anatomy of the human body will be studied on cadavers.
On the other hand, there will be an emphasis on the care for patients in light of their phase in the illness trajectory. How are decisions made on whether to perform surgery or not? This decision might be straightforward for a healthy young adult who had an accident, but less straightforward for a frail older person who broke a hip. Do the advantages of surgery weigh up to the disadvantages? And might advance care planning, timely talking about wishes for care and treatment in the last phase of life, have helped in the decision-making? And when after surgery it turns out that the disease remains life-limiting, palliative care is important in order to treat symptoms, maintain a good quality of life and provide appropriate care according to the wishes of the patient.
The international minors of the Faculty of Medicine start on September 2nd.