“An open-access, comprehensive otolaryngology—head and neck surgery video atlas for resident education”

To the Editor:

We wish to call the reader's attention to a new resource developed for resident surgical education. Within all surgical fields, including otolaryngology, there is ample opportunity for innovation with operative videos to enhance surgical training. Recently others have called for increased use of video for training purposes in otolaryngology [1]. Although the need for quality and well-organized surgical educational videos has been long-standing, the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened this demand recently as trainees are receiving less hands-on surgical training in the operating room due to the requirements of social distancing, limitations of elective surgical cases, and need to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE). A small pilot study by Poon et al. [2] showed the value of otologic surgical videos posted to the YouTube platform for resident education with positive feedback from residents [2]. YouTube is widely available and one study found that as many as 64% of medical students and surgical residents use it in preparation for surgery [3] and another study showed 46% of otolaryngology residents reported using online videos [4].

To this end, we have developed a comprehensive open-access high-definition otolaryngology - head and neck surgical video atlas. These videos are accessible on a Youtube.com playlist without subscriptions or advertisements at our institution's channel. They are also organized by subspecialty and embedded in a surgical video atlas on headmirror.com. Each video is acquired using a professional videography team to obtain high-definition footage and is subsequently edited by the authors. The published version is narrated by an expert and follows a predictable format of pre-operative considerations, surgical steps, highlighting key anatomic and surgical landmarks and pearls of each operation.

We recently surveyed our resident trainees and received overwhelmingly positive feedback (Fig. 1 ). They frequently use this resource for operative preparation and review afterward to solidify salient surgical concepts. Prior to these videos, the top three resources used by residents in our program were surgical textbooks, online text-based protocols, and surgical notebooks passed down by prior trainees. Amongst these available resources, the majority of residents indicated that this online surgical atlas was more helpful than many of these prior resources. We are committed to continuing to expand and improve this resource to support otolaryngology surgical education and agree that widely accessible surgical videos provide a great opportunity to enhance head and neck surgery training.

Fig. 1.

Resident survey responses: 100% response rate (n = 28). A) Frequency of use by PGY Level. B) Resources residents used prior to the surgical atlas development. C) Various ways residents use the surgical atlas. D) The helpfulness of the surgical video atlas compared to resources used prior to the surgical atlas becoming available.