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t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 6 30 profession and staves off the potential for burnout. "That broader, restorative purpose is crucial for restoring someone's faith in their profession," she said. "I think the surgeons who come here feel empow- ered to potentially adopt something that's going to move them forward in regards to their skill set. There's great joy in that, and there's a little buzz in acquiring the skills necessary to do something better. Luckily, surgeons are very visually and tactilely oriented, so if you put something in their hands— from a new stapler to a new energy device—they get it pretty quickly. It's amazing how rapidly that transforma- tion occurs." Stefan W. Kreuzer, M.D., assistant professor in the department of orthope- dic surgery at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), who has partnered with MITIE on several occasions to teach a course in anterior hip replacement— a minimally invasive form of surgery— is one such individual. "Since surgeons are very proce- durally oriented, you can only show so much on a PowerPoint presentation," Kreuzer said. "I think what makes MITIE so unique is that their stations are very much like real-world situations. They have all of the equipment there: the monitoring equipment, the lights, the operating room tables. It really allows us to train our surgeons exactly the way they should be performing procedures in the operating room." "There will always be a need for a quaternary level of care system that can do things that are groundbreaking, innovative and important for develop- ment and research," added Robert K. Zurawin, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine, who has also lent his expertise to MITIE. "That's another value that MITIE provides. Because it's in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, with all of the available resources of its great hospitals and cli- nicians, MITIE integrates clinical care and research with the most advanced While physician education serves as the backbone that supports MITIE, the institute's robust research core aims to further the advancement of less invasive and more accurate surgical procedures. Through the development of new metrics for measuring technical expertise—including a special camera that focuses on a surgeon's face during a procedure, quantitatively measuring his or her level of stress—and even technology that allows practicing sur- geons to communicate wirelessly with specialty experts, MITIE's researchers are setting new standards in surgery. "The other area of unique expertise at MITIE is our computational surgery program," Dunkin said. "It's actually a specialty that we developed here. This is about bringing computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and clini- cians—mainly surgeons—together to work on issues in the operating room to make it function more effectively. We've got a whole variety of projects in that domain, from ones that monitor activity in the OR to unique ways to create tools for surgical use. It's really about bringing computational power into the operative environment and using it to improve performance." For Bass, who has over 30 years of experience as a surgeon, MITIE is a resuscitative platform for physicians in practice—one that breathes life into the daily grind of a technically demanding The future of MITIE is to continue to be the place where surgeons are going to come to learn a new procedure. Not because it's a great-looking facility in a great town in a great medical center, but because it's going to enable them to become successful at adopting a new procedure into the practice. — BRIAN DUNKIN, M.D. Medical Director of MITIE tools for medical education. That allows MITIE to stretch the boundaries of medicine on all fronts—and that's as important as just being able to deliver world-class patient care." In an effort to push those boundar- ies of research and development, the American College of Surgeons recently gathered medical experts across mul- tiple specialties at MITIE to establish a national model for retooling, creden- tialing and privileging for surgeons in practice. Bass and Dunkin envision MITIE as a key player in the future of reassessment for practicing physicians— all while remaining a safe, supportive home for the teaching, training and dissemination of new technologies. "The future of MITIE is to continue to be the place where surgeons are going to come to learn a new proce- dure," Dunkin said. "Not because it's a great-looking facility in a great town in a great medical center, but because it's going to enable them to become successful at adopting a new procedure into the practice."

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