TITLE:
Development and Implementation of a Minimally Invasive Surgery Curriculum for Military Medical Students
AUTHORS:
Ze Wang, Zhenhua Wang, Pei Wang, Rongqiang Wei
KEYWORDS:
Military Medical Student Education, Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), Minimally Invasive Surgery Teaching
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.12 No.9,
September
16,
2025
ABSTRACT: The future battlefield under high-tech conditions features complex environments, high personnel concentration, and highly lethal weaponry. These factors lead to mass casualties presenting with diverse and severe injuries that are difficult to manage. Continuously improving battlefield casualty care theories, constructing a Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) system suited to our military, refining forward-deployed treatment techniques, and reducing the combat casualty mortality rate are pressing challenges for both current military medical student education and combat casualty care training. This is also an essential requirement to enhance our army’s combat effectiveness and combat medical support capabilities. Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is progressively becoming the mainstream of surgical procedures due to its advantages, including reduced trauma, enhanced visualization, faster postoperative recovery, and fewer complications. Currently, cultivating proficient minimally invasive surgeons domestically, internationally, within and outside the military is difficult, costly, and time-consuming, posing obstacles for the training of military medical talents and the future battlefield’s comprehensive care for casualties. Focusing on the theory and practical training of MIS, our team’s surgical education effort addresses this issue. Based on the current status of MIS teaching for undergraduate military medical students and integrating our team’s methodologies and experiences in delivering MIS theoretical instruction and hands-on training, we propose a systematic “Six-Step” strategy tailored for military medical students. This strategy aims to develop and implement a structured MIS teaching system.