Training, Credentialing, Proctoring and Medicolegal Risks of Robotic Urological Surgery: Recommendations of the Society of Urologic Robotic Surgeons

Purpose: With the exponential growth of robotic urological surgery, particularly with robot assisted radical prostatectomy, guidelines for safe initiation of this technology are a necessity. Currently no standardized credentialing system exists to our knowledge to evaluate surgeon competency and safety with robotic urological surgery performance. Although proctoring is a modality by which such competency can be evaluated, other training tools and guidelines are needed to ensure that the requisite knowledge and technical skills to perform this procedure have been acquired. We evaluated the current status of proctoring and credentialing in other surgical specialties to discuss and recommend its application and implementation specifically for robot assisted radical prostatectomy.Materials and Methods: We reviewed the literature on safety and medicolegal implications of proctoring and the safe introduction of surgical procedures to develop recommendations for robot assisted radical prostatectomy proctoring an...