Sim One, Do One, Teach One: Considerations in Designing Training Curricula for Surgical Simulation

Learning curves of basic laparoscopic psychomotor skills in SINERGIA VR simulator

“…A similar result can be found in [34], where Pagador et al expose that intermediate surgeons could feel self-confident and move tools quicker than needed when accomplishing a surgeon's knot. We agree with Pagador et al because in our opinion, repeating a task without proper feedback or mentoring do not lead to an expert execution which is also supportedbyKolozsvarietal.in [13] where they state the four criteria requested for a deliberate practice: improve a specific aspect of performance; the need of valid, thorough and immediate feedback; opportunity to perform the tasks repeatedly within a controlled environment; and training sessions limited to 1 h. Therefore, VR simulators as SINERGIA together with a suitable mentorship could be a proper environment for this deliberate practice.…”

“…However, the optimum training program has not been defined yet [30] and the structure of that practice has to be determined too because only a lengthy enough practice is not sufficient [13]. Although surgeons normally acquire surgical skills in short courses [30], it seems that distributed training is superior to massed training in acquiring and retaining psychomotor skills for endoscopic surgery on a VR simulator [31,32].…”

“…Thanks to training, some behaviors, skills and surgical gestures can be made automatically so the limited attentional resources that should be dedicated to them can be focused on other activities like decision making [9]. Simulators are becoming an important method for surgical training because they offer a low-stakes, learner-centered education as well as a reliable and reproducible environment [10][11][12][13] and there is a wide literature proving its utility [14][15][16][17][18]. Simulators are usually classified in three categories: box trainers, augmented reality simulators and virtual reality simulators.…”

An Update to the Proficiency Benchmarks for Surgical Simulation Training in Laparoscopy at Oregon Health and Science University

“…Thus, in a field characterized by superiority, if not total perfection, it is not surprising that understanding this concept is at the forefront of surgical education programs across the country 1 . As the discipline of medicine, especially surgery, evolves, the task of educating the next generation of surgeons is faced with many new and unique challenges.…”

“…VirtuOHSU adopts the general philosophy that simulation-based learning should be part of continual medical education, ingrained throughout a physician's training 1,3,8 .…”