Value Added: the Case for Point-of-View Camera use in Orthopedic Surgical Education

Orthopedic surgical education is evolving as educators search for new ways to enhance surgical skills training. Orthopedic educators should seek new methods and technologies to augment and add value to real-time orthopedic surgical experience. This paper describes a protocol whereby we have started to capture and evaluate specific orthopedic milestone procedures with a GoPro® point-of-view video camera and a dedicated video reviewing website as a way of supplementing the current paradigm in surgical skills training. We report our experience regarding the details and feasibility of this protocol.

Upon identification of a patient undergoing surgical fixation of a hip or ankle fracture, an orthopedic resident places a GoPro® point-of-view camera on his or her forehead. All fluoroscopic images acquired during the case are saved and later incorporated into a video on the reviewing website. Surgical videos are uploaded to a secure server and are accessible for later review and assessment via a custom-built website. An electronic survey of resident participants was performed utilizing Qualtrics software. Results are reported using descriptive statistics.

A total of 51 surgical videos involving 23 different residents have been captured to date. This includes 20 intertrochanteric hip fracture cases and 31 ankle fracture cases. The average duration of each surgical video was 1 hour and 16 minutes (range 40 minutes to 2 hours and 19 minutes). Of 24 orthopedic resident surgeons surveyed, 88% thought capturing a video portfolio of orthopedic milestones would benefit their education.

There is a growing demand in orthopedic surgical education to extract more value from each surgical experience. While further work in development and refinement of such assessments is necessary, we feel that intraoperative video, particularly when captured and presented in a non-threatening, user friendly manner, can add significant value to the present and future paradigm of orthopedic surgical skill training.