In April 2026, GCSEI faculty joined colleagues at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi to deliver Ghana’s first Non-Technical Skills for Surgery (NOTSS) training workshop. Organized through the Colorectal Unit within KATH’s Directorate of Surgery, the one-day program brought together surgeons and surgical trainees, anesthesia providers, nurses, and other members of the perioperative team. Hospital leadership participated in the program, along with colleagues from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
The faculty included Dr. Kwabena Agbedinu, the first graduate of our Ghana Colorectal Surgery Fellowship and now a colorectal surgeon at KATH, alongside Prof. Gifty Kwakye, Prof. Lyen Huang, and Dr. Eseenam Agbeko. His role as a faculty facilitator reflects one of the program’s central goals: developing local surgical leaders who can train and mentor the next generation.
The workshop focused on skills that are essential to safe surgical care but are not always formally taught: communication, teamwork and leadership, decision-making and planning, and situational awareness. The day was intentionally designed to be highly interactive. Faculty used panel discussions, video simulations, and small-group case scenarios to explore how surgical teams communicate, make decisions, and respond to challenging situations in the operating room.
The discussions were particularly vibrant and candid. Bringing surgeons, anesthesia providers, nurses, trainees, and hospital leaders into the same room allowed participants to hear perspectives that are not always discussed together. Conversations explored issues such as communication across disciplines, hierarchy in the operating room, teamwork during difficult cases, and the importance of creating an environment in which every member of the team feels empowered to speak up when there is a concern about patient safety.
As the first NOTSS training program held in Ghana, the workshop marked an important expansion of our approach to surgical capacity building. Strengthening surgical care requires more than developing the technical expertise of individual surgeons. It also requires strong teams that communicate effectively, recognize evolving problems, make sound decisions together, and create a shared culture of safety.
For GCSEI, the workshop also demonstrated what sustainable partnership can look like: a graduate of our colorectal surgery fellowship returning as faculty, Ghanaian and international colleagues teaching side by side, and multidisciplinary teams coming together to identify ways to make surgery safer within their own institutions. Our goal is to continue supporting locally led efforts like these so that the expertise developed through our programs is shared, strengthened, and ultimately carried forward by surgical leaders in Ghana.
Delegation of medical students from KNUST with their faculty mentor, Professor Fay
