Teaching Award for the Interprofessional ENT Team

In order to promote and further improve teaching, the Faculty of Medicine at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) awards the Albert Kölliker Teaching Prize twice a year. The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros; the prize money must be used to further improve teaching.

At the faculty's graduation ceremony on 22 July 2023, the prize was awarded to the interprofessional team from the Clinic of Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases at the University Hospital of Würzburg (UKW). Clinic Director Professor Rudolf Hagen and his colleagues Professor Kristen Rak, Dr Stefan Kaulitz, Dr Pascal Ickrath and Dr Jonas Engert received the award for the establishment of hybrid teaching, in particular the development of internet-based training for temporal bone surgery.

Technically Sophisticated Surgical Courses

The petrous temporal bone is the skull bone that contains the inner ear with the hearing and balance organs. Operations at this site include hearing-improving surgery in the middle ear (replacement of defective auditory ossicles), hearing rehabilitation for deafness with a so-called cochlear implant or for tumour diseases.

The ENT clinic at the UKW has been offering training courses since 1989, in which temporal bone operations are transmitted live from the operating theatre to the lecture theatre and in which the focus is on surgical training using temporal bone models. The courses are held in English and attract doctors from all over the world.

The clinic has continuously developed the courses technically. Most recently, a three-dimensional live transmission in ultra-high resolution (4K) was set up, which is also used in student teaching. The Würzburg Dr Herbert Brause Foundation has funded the technical upgrade several times.

Training Kit Arrives in the Post

Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which posed considerable problems for the realisation of the courses. The solution came in the form of a virtual rock leg course, which the clinic set up in collaboration with the medical technology company MEDEL.

The web-based course allows participants to continue to follow live operations and lectures online. They are also sent a training kit. This enables them to practise operations on the petrous temporal bone without having to travel to Würzburg. Staff from the ENT clinic will supervise the exercises online.

The training kit includes an endoscope camera, an artificial petrous bone, instruments and models of hearing implants. The exercises include the insertion of various hearing implants after appropriate preparation of the temporal bone model.

Course Was a Worldwide Premiere

After a successful trial run in February 2021 with ten participants from different countries, this technique was incorporated into the normal surgical course. The clinic now regularly offers this in a hybrid version: some participants are on site in Würzburg, while others join via the internet from different countries.

"This is the first time in the world that we have run this type of virtual temporal bone course with online supervised dissection exercises," says Professor Hagen. The innovative course can be used for practical student training as well as for international hands-on training in countries where travelling to Würzburg is difficult.

Rudolf Hagen and his team intend to use the prize money of 10,000 euros to purchase laptops and software, in particular for the clinic's participation in the newly established "Digital Medicine" course, which the clinic will support with its own seminar.