ASIR SURGICAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM

FIRST EDITION

1422-2002

The surgical field is a live specialty that has a good outcome. Unfortunately, many people may believe that surgery is a branch that does not need any effort more than training and practicing operations. This is not enough, because theoretical knowledge is essential for any medical field including surgery. We, as doctors, should always keep in mind that famous word saying: “to study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all”.

For the aim of consolidation of the theoretical knowledge in an easier way than reading the text books, and for preparing for surgical written examinations; this MCQs bank was prepared. The idea was raised by Dr. Gharama Al-Shehri, the surgical residency program director in Asir Central Hospital. The idea is that any surgical resident reads the major, most famous five or six surgical MCQs books should pass the written examinations especially the first part or first step examination.

The beginning of any thing is the most difficult part of its entire course. During developing of this project, I have faced many difficulties. The most difficult difficulties were the technical ones. My initial impression about MCQs books that are created on CD-ROM is that the all questions with their answers in a certain topic are going to be in one page. What I was faced with is totally the opposite. I found each question is located in one page with its answer is in another page. That is why I spent about seven weeks to develop this project, while I was expecting it not to take more than seven days!

As just a beginning of this project, almost all the MCQs in two major surgical MCQs books have been included; those are Sabiston and Greenfield. Other books were about to be included but I was faced with technical difficulties, that is why those books need to be typed (manually). I organized this book in a way similar to the surgical book so called “RUSH”, as I find it very famous and widely accepted by surgical residents. Because of the short time before a coming written surgical examination, I believed that this MCQs bank should be distributed at this time.

I think the most important success gained at this time, is that we developed a backbone for this project. It is going to be much easier in the future to add to and modify this MCQs bank.

I will be happy to receive any suggestions to improve this bank or to add to it in the coming editions.

I like to say (at the end) that this project in this shape “is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but, probably, is the end of the beginning”.

Finally, I pray to Allah to bless our efforts and to let them aiming only for sake of Him.