Recent ophthalmology graduates are sometimes surprised that they must be proctored for surgical cases even though they have completed years of training, passed the board certification exam (written and oral), and done hundreds of surgeries in the past. This is because the hospitals, surgery facilities, and medical centers want to ensure that new surgeons have the appropriate surgical skills and judgment and can operate safely within their privileges and within the standard of care for the community. Even if you have completed residency and fellowship, passed the American Board of Ophthalmology certification exam, and practiced elsewhere for years, the new facility is going to require you to have at least a handful of proctored cases.
During the proctored cases, an experienced and trusted surgeon from that facility is going to observe you complete a surgery in a safe and efficient manner. If you have followed our advice of being your own toughest critic, then this should be easy for you. But it sometimes seems easier than it really is: when another surgeon is watching you operate, will you get nervous or anxious?
The case shown here is a surgeon who encountered some difficulty in completing this routine cataract case which lasted 25 minutes (don’t worry, the video below is shown at 4x) and resulted in a capsule run-out and retained lens fragments. There are some very important lessons in this video and just remember that you, too, will have proctored cases in the near future.
