Objective evaluation of skill acquisition in novice microsurgeons

Area of Science:

• Surgical Education
• Microsurgery Training
• Medical Simulation

Background:

• Patient safety initiatives limit hands-on surgical skill practice for residents.
• Development of alternative training methods is crucial for surgical education.
• Microsurgery requires specialized, foundational technical skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate novel simulation-based drills for teaching fundamental microsurgical skills.
• To establish objective proficiency benchmarks for novice microsurgeons.
• To assess the time efficiency of acquiring basic microsurgical competencies through simulation.

Main Methods:

• Two distinct drills were designed by expert microsurgeons: suturing on a rubber glove and anastomosis on silastic tubing.
• Residents practiced drills until achieving predefined expert proficiency criteria (e.g., time, consecutive successful attempts).
• Expert proficiency was defined as performance within two standard deviations of the mean expert performance time.

Main Results:

• Six out of eight novice residents mastered the suturing drill within an average of 5.3 attempts.
• All eight residents successfully completed the anastomosis drill, achieving expert proficiency within an average of 5.4 attempts.
• The drills provided a structured and measurable pathway for skill acquisition.

Conclusions:

• Simulation-based drills are effective for teaching foundational microsurgical skills to residents.
• Residents can achieve expert-level proficiency in basic microsurgical tasks in a reasonable timeframe using these drills.
• These training modules offer a viable solution to the challenges of limited operative experience in surgical education.