Robotic Surgery & Surgeon Training

The Wall Street Journal has published a couple of stories about a community hospital with a rash of patient injuries alleging surgeoninexperience using the DaVinci Robot. The hospital requires surgeons to attend a two day training session, during which they use human or pig cadavers, followed by four live cases. When reviewing robotic surgery cases, it is important to investigate the surgeon's training using the robot including both his/her initial training and subsequent live case training. How many cases did the surgeon complete under supervision of another surgeon? How much training did the supervising surgeon have?