Medical student experience with robot-assisted surgery after limited laparoscopy exposure

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the objective and subjective experience of medical students completing robotic surgery tasks after limited laparoscopy exposure. Twenty-three medical students without previous laparoscopy and robotic surgery experience self-enrolled into 0 min (n = 11), 20 min (n = 6), and 40 min (n = 6) laparoscopy training groups. Subjects completed rope passing and ball placement tasks on a laparoscopy trainer before repeating similar tasks on the Senhance Surgical System, a robot-assisted digital laparoscopy device. Videos were recorded to evaluate objective measures including time, completion rate, clutch use, out of view instruments, ball drops, and manual adjustments. The NASA-TLX survey was administered to assess subjective experience using workload and task demand measures. There were no statistically significant differences in objective performance between the groups (p > 0.05). Subjects who completed laparoscopy training reported higher workloads, but these differences were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). NASA-TLX workload was correlated with time performance on Pearson and Spearman tests (r = 0.623, rho = 0.681, p < 0.01). Initial experience of medical students with robot-assisted surgery did not differ significantly after limited laparoscopy exposure.