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Hello, good evening and welcome to the Black Belt Academy of Surgical Skills. My name is David o'regan. I'm a retired cardiac surgeon, the immediate past director of the Faculty of Surgical Trainers for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, who accredit uh broadcasting. And I'm currently the professor in the Medical Education Research Development Unit at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Malaya. If this is your first time, welcome. And if you're returning, thank you very much. Thank you to me all for allowing us to literally reach across the globe. Tonight, we have attendees from 40 countries and it's a very special night because I'm proud to introduce a colleague and friend at the University of Malaya. We've been talking about sharp blades last week and I think it's only appropriate that we proceed with talking about sharp minds. My colleague, Professor Doctor Van Narayanan is a consultant neurosurgeon here in the division of neurosurgery at the University of Malaya. He spent 26 years in total in medicine. 12 years as a consultant. He's published 75 journals, the citation count of 1600 an index of 14. He is the founding director of the Masters of neurosurgery Program at the University of the first Chair of Surgical Research Unit in the Department of Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine. And he is the current head of international networking globalization and strategic development at the Faculty of Medicine. He first received his initial training in Malaysia and completed his neurosurgical training at Adam bro in Cambridge in 2012. He was appointed as a consultant neurosurgeon at the University of Malaya and specializes in complex neuro oncology and epilepsy surgery. This research focuses on managing acquired brain injury across a variety of conditions including traumatic brain injury, neuro oncology, and intractable epilepsy. And he's now expanded his repertoire and interest to include neuroscience, patient safety A I and environmental impact on medicine. Van actually believes embarking on new research ideas, keeps his mind alert, sharp and active and he's deeply committed to teaching and encouraging all doctors, especially surgeons to undertake some research as part of their career. It's a privilege to introduce him and we are going to be talking about why research matters in surgery. Welcome environment. And thank you for joining the Black Belt Academy. Thank you very much David. Uh That was very nice of you. Very kind of you. Um I am actually very happy to be here. Uh And I think I'm very privileged to have had this uh opportunity to share uh some of my little ideas over the, which I've gained over the past uh uh 1520 years. Thank you. So we'll start our Ivan. Why does research matter in surgery? Um ok, before we start, uh I just like to share a personal anecdote um like many surgeons from uh this region, uh especially the Asian region. Um When I did my medicine research was a very small part of uh medicine. In fact, it was considered not very important, you know, it, it was more important to gain your clinical skills as quickly as possible, to learn as much knowledge as possible. Uh to, to uh translate that knowledge to clinical practice. Uh so much. So, research was always uh uh pushed right to the back. Um And as I was doing my postgraduate training, research was uh for uh for quite a bit of my initial years, research was very much uh c it was only in the last uh 10 to 12 years, I would say ever since I've had the time to expand my horizons that I've, I've actually come to realize research is actually the foundation understanding research is the foundation of evidence based medicine. You know, you, you, you have to understand how research is conducted, how to evaluate the research and how you can then use that evaluation in actual practice to improve patient outcomes. And you can't do that with just book knowledge, you need to actually be in the field uh doing research. That's the best way to learn uh uh just like surgery. The best way to learn surgery is not from textbooks is by doing and the best way to evaluate research is by doing research, which is why I think research is an essential skill. We should teach our our trainees from, you know, year one of medicine all the way through their postgraduate uh clinical uh training because it should be part and parcel of postgraduate training. That's, that's what I feel. So, so how does research contribute to evidence-based practice? The the primary uh way research contributes again here, when we say research, we are talking about practical knowledge and application of research. So for a surgeon who has a practical knowledge, uh we derive our evidence based medicine uh through reading journals and articles and without the adequate uh practical knowledge, uh you're gonna just believe whatever is uh uh distributed to you uh through your uh uh through your peers, through your mentors uh through the sales representatives, uh the medical pharmaceutical agents uh and sometimes through tiktok and websites, the best way to actually uh evaluate and uh uh and judge a paper or the value of a paper and how, whether you want to accept it is uh by actually knowing what is the methodology, how did they apply this uh this and whether that is transferrable to your own situation. And the, the, the only way you can do that is if you yourself have done some research uh in your own setting, which is why I think it's important to actually know the basics of research. Uh, it's interesting that you say that you say that and I totally agree. So, how do you get started? Or when you sh should you get started and again, uh, uh, this is a question I get quite often from my trainees. When do we get started? Uh, there is no good time to start anything. Uh The earlier you start, the better it is. Uh And as soon as you, you have the ability you should start. Um I've got uh students premed students who come to me with uh asking me if they could join my research team, they could observe what's happening and actually get very inspired by this young kids, right? Uh They haven't even gone to medical school and then they are so interested i it, it just inspires you, you know, your uh that, that, that whole idea that you, you are never too young to learn something new, something exciting. And um really you have to do it. You can do it at the early days in your medical school. You can do it when you are starting your training, you can do it during training and you have to do it throughout your career. But uh the best time is when you actually are able to set aside a little bit of time beyond your clinical work beyond unfortunately, as surgeons, we do spend quite a bit of our time and in clinical practice. So you have to try to juggle that time for clinical practice from your educational needs and put aside a little bit of time to research uh start as soon as possible. Honestly, that's the simple basic answer as soon as you have the ability, as soon as you can find an adequate mentor start. That's the second time we've mentioned the word mental. Why is that important? And when embarking upon research, unlike clinical medicine or surgery, which already has a uh proper pathway developed over the last 100 years or so, where we have got textbooks, we've got uh medical teachers, we've got trainers who actually have been trained how to teach not all doctors, not all surgeons can become good teachers in research, you. And if you and this is, this applies generally across the board. Um That is one of the reasons why I thought research was a choice in my early days because I didn't find the correct mentor. Uh I did not have the appropriate environment around me which encourage people doing research. It was always, oh, research is for the people who don't know how to uh research is for the people who you know, who have no other choices, right? They they they they have got no ways to become prominent. So they do research. It, it was always put aside. But then uh the mentor and and mentor is not somebody who's going to, uh, teach you step.