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Full immersion simulation: validation of a distributed simulation environment for technical and non-technical skills
James Brewin1, Jessica Tang2, Prokar Dasgupta1
1Kings Health Partners, Guy's and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Objective:
To evaluate the face, content and construct validity of the distributed simulation (DS) environment for technical and non-technical skills training in endourology. To evaluate the educational impact of DS for urology training.
Subjects And Methods:
DS offers a portable, low-cost simulated operating room environment that can be set up in any open space. A prospective mixed methods design using established validation methodology was conducted in this simulated environment with 10 experienced and 10 trainee urologists. All participants performed a simulated prostate resection in the DS environment. Outcome measures included surveys to evaluate the DS, as well as comparative analyses of experienced and trainee urologist's performance using real-time and 'blinded' video analysis and validated performance metrics. Non-parametric statistical methods were used to compare differences between groups.
Results:
The DS environment demonstrated face, content and construct validity for both non-technical and technical skills. Kirkpatrick level 1 evidence for the educational impact of the DS environment was shown. Further studies are needed to evaluate the effect of simulated operating room training on real operating room performance.
Conclusions:
This study has shown the validity of the DS environment for non-technical, as well as technical skills training. DS-based simulation appears to be a valuable addition to traditional classroom-based simulation training.
