Operation Room Burn Center, Division of Plastic Surgery

Internship Department Introduction

Burn injury treatment is one of the important learning issues that the plastic surgeons must learn. The Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital (KMUH) burn intensive care unit started its service since 1988. There are 5 isolated intensive care beds available in our unit. The major burn injury victims can receive proper treatment in our unit, including emergent fasciaotomy, bed-side debridement, and hydrotherapy. As to the operation room, there are 22 operation rooms for general anesthesia procedures and 2 operation rooms for local anesthesia procedures. There are about 2200~2400 operations done every months in the operation room, KMUH. There are about 130 nursing staffs and operation personnel. We do several advanced high technologic surgery, including the DaVinci Robotic surgery, Renaissance System for spine surgery, intraoperative guiding system and minimal invasive laparoscopic/endoscopic surgery. The students can follow the mentors to enter the operation theater and be an active clerk to see the process of operations. 

Internship Learning Objective and Training Program Outline

1. Basic program: Integration of lecture, clinical ward run and field investigation to gain knowledge of epidemiological and clinical characteristics of burn injury in Taiwan. The initial burn treatment, burn wound debridement, final skin graft and scar management/ reconstruction will be discussed.
2. Advanced program: Through clinical observation, discussion with clinician and operation personnel, the students are going to learn the advantages and disadvantages of these high technologic surgery. We are going to guide the students to focus on a project that interested them. The project could be a research project, or writing a review article.