The “teaching time-out”: a novel framework for surgical education

In the decade since its inception, the World Health Organization's surgical safety checklist has fundamentally changed the conduct of surgery the world over. A critical component of the checklist - the "pause" or "time-out" - requires all operating room staff to stop other activities and together review critical information about the case to ensure that nothing is missed. Surgical trainees in Canada are transitioning to a competency-based medical education model; a core aspect of this model requires trainees to advocate for their own learning goals. We propose the use of a detailed and formalized preoperative pause as a means to enable superior and more targeted intraoperative learning for surgical trainees.