Diffusion of Robotic Technology Into Urologic Practice has Led to Improved Resident Physician Robotic Skills

To investigate whether propagation of robotic technology into urologic practice and training programs has improved baseline urology resident trainee robotic skills.

Questionnaires were completed by each urology resident trainee participating in a training course and asked about access to robotic simulation, robot experience, and console time. Baseline resident trainee scores on the Mimic Robotic Simulator (Mimic Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA) from 27 participants of 2012 course were compared with the 2015 scores of 34 trainees on 4 standard Mimic exercises using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. p = 0.05 or less were considered statistically significant.

Totally, 34 resident trainees from 17 programs in the Southeast Section of the American Urological Association participated in an annual 2-day robotic training course.

Overall score, economy of motion score, and time to complete exercise were all significantly better in the 2015 trainee group compared with the 2012 trainee group (p < 0.001) for the Peg Board 1, Camera Targeting 2, and Energy Dissection exercises. Overall scores for needle targeting improved between 2012 and 2015 (p = 0.04). Trainee access to a simulator was not associated with overall score on any of the 4 exercises in the 2015 group. In the 2015 group, actual robotic console time was associated with better overall scores in Camera Targeting 2 (p = 0.02) and Peg Board 1 (p = 0.04).

Baseline resident trainee performance on basic robotic simulator exercises has improved over the past 3 years irrespective of robotic simulator access or console time.