Surgical teaching at the Medical School of Otto-von- Guericke University in Magdeburg - basic conceptual description.

Teaching in surgery, one of the classical vast clinical and main disciplines beside internal medicine, also needs to be associated with great attention in regard to a valuable final result at the end of the study of human medicine. Surgery is not only the subject of a large number of lectures; it also represents one third (four months) of compulsory internship (practical year - in German, „Praktisches Jahr"") at the end of the study of medicine. Therefore, medical teaching of students should always be a part of serious and steady attempts to optimize the curriculum and contents as a component of guiding activities that focus on substantial improvement of the study of medicine. In detail, the classical and traditionally established type of teaching, i.e., the (oral) lecture, requires to be further developed and reasonably completed by numerous interactive and practice-oriented teaching, learning and examining modalities (obligatory or facultative seminars/courses, training in [very] small groups of students, bed-side teaching, individual practical exercises within the SkillsLab, groups of young researchers, research projects in teaching, scientific publications on topics and recommendable experiences of teaching that include students, „Teach-the-teacher" projects etc.). Although many novel concepts have been inaugurated and considerable advances have been achieved, there is a steady need for further improvement. In the presented representative, but medical school-specific overview, the current complex surgical teaching concept, which has been continuously optimized over the last couple of years at the Otto-von-Guericke University Medical School with a University Hospital of Magdeburg (Germany) is described as a scientific and systematizing document as well as a manuscript associated with ongoing preparation of an institutional "Teaching Manual" on surgical teaching and training for medical students. It should - last but not least - provide the basis for a public discussion, which might hopefully and possibly result in further structural reforms of (surgical) teaching in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]