Background: Trauma surgery is a discipline in which the training phase for specialization requires a technical and time-intensive learning curve, including the repetitive training of manual skills. This results in prolonged operation times and thus elevated costs.
Objectives: The present study retrospectively examines operations in trauma surgery and orthopaedics at a Munich university hospital according to the required curriculum for further specialist training. The duration of procedures at the various training levels and the resulting costs were compared.
Material and methods: Based on digital surgical records, more than 2,000 surgical interventions were analysed and checked that they fulfilled the practical requirements. Patients with multiple injuries and polytrauma, in addition to irregularly complex cases, were removed from the calculation to ensure high comparability of the individual cases. This yielded more than 1,000+ cases for evaluation. The per-minute cost was calculated to allow for the translation of operating time into costs.
Results: The study shows a prolonged duration of operating time of 19.75 % when the procedure was conducted by residents. This prolongation can be split into 37 subgroups according to body region and type of procedure. The prolongation of operation time could be quantified as a specific prolongation per cluster, in addition to cumulative prolongation. By including the operating costs, the operation-dependent training costs are shown as an exact sum of Euros.
Conclusion: Surgical training of residents costs hospitals the appropriate amounts of time and money and reduces the overall number of procedures performed, justifying special consideration of the financing of training hospitals.
Keywords: Duration of operation; Further education; Specialization; Surgery; Training cost.