Anastomosis: a craft workshop for surgical trainees.

Surgery is a very personal exercise and no two surgeons use an identical technique. Traditionally, operative expertise has been acquired through a system of apprenticeships. Pettigrew has shown that operative performance is the main factor in determining postoperative complications and therefore the length of hospital stay, and surgical journals have recently returned to technique as a topic of debate. Certain skills, such as knot tying, can be learned and tested outside the operating theatre, and this has been extended to craft workshops dealing with more complex procedures, including fracture fixation. This article describes an anastomosis workshop held in New Zealand recently for general surgical trainees.