Testing Tools, Techniques, and Teaching Methods in Surgery In a state-of-the-art operating room, surgical instruments move precisely in the hands of a robot, guided by a surgeon who sits at a console on the other side of the room. Special equipment monitors the surgeon’s performance.  Down the hall, doctors perform life-saving interventions on a life-size, high-tech dummy whose heartbeat responds to their actions. Observers create changes in the simulated patient’s breathing, pulse, and heart rhythm and watch how the trainees respond.	A UCSD surgeon at the console of a da Vinci robotic surgical system in the Center for the Future of Surgery.
Simulated patients have a pulse that the doctor can feel In a media room, doctors gather to study videos of their clinics to see how well they engaged with their patients. Is this the future? Yes, and it is going on right now at the UCSD Center for the Future of Surgery, a project of the Surgery Research Laboratory (SRL). Its mission is to test surgical tools, techniques, and teaching methods. Its studies will investigate how surgeons can best be equipped with the tools, knowledge and experience to provide safe, state-of-the-art surgery for their patients.
“Our mission is to advance surgical sciences through education and testing,” says Dr. David Easter, Director of the CFS/SRL. Surgical Director is Dr. Santiago Horgan, Professor of Surgery and Head of the Division of Minimally Invasive Surgery at UCSD. The Center for the Future of Surgery is a new name for an effort that has been part of the School of Medicine since it began. Since 1968, the medical school has performed research on surgical tools and techniques, operating the Surgery Research Laboratory on its Hillcrest campus. It occupies the oldest building in the medical school.	Dr. Easter and a simulated patient in the Center for the Future of Surgery.