Assessment of Technical Abilities in Endoscopic Surgery Simulated by Medicine Students

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Simulation training has become a widely accepted educational tool for the development of technical skills in endoscopic surgery. The objective of this work was to evaluate bachelors who hold a Degree in Medicine in the execution of exercises carried out in both physical and virtual simulations. MATERIAL AND METHODS The descriptive study was carried out among 400 students (266 women and 134 men) in their third year of medicine studies between 2016 and 2019. The practises consisted of 11 hours of teaching, made of theory introduction, and exercise work in groups of 15-20 students on 4 workstations: LapSim, Pelvitrainer, Transanal Endoscopic Surgery (singleport) and Flexible Endoscopy. The execution time per individual exercise and in pairs is collected. RESULTS Individual exercises: the average execution time was: 277.0±117.8 sg, LapSim: 158.8± 66.44 sg and Pelvitrainer: 123.6±82.7sg. Couple exercises: the average execution time in Transanal Endoscopic Surgery was: 79.4±51.9 sg and Flexible Endoscopy: 53.56±34.4 sg. The analysis by gender showed that men performed better in LapSim with an average of 141.4 sg ± 52.2 in respect to women, 167.8 sg ± 71.1 (p < 0.05). In the rest of the exercises, no significant differences were shown. CONCLUSIONS Conducting simulated practises or studies for further development in the Degree is feasible, with objective evaluations of the skills acquired. The possibility of interacting in a controlled environment and with immediate feedback has made it possible to identify baseline differences by gender only in virtual simulation.