Does quality assured eLearning provide adequate preparation for robotic surgical skills; a prospective, randomized...

Area of Science:

• Surgical Education
• Robotic Surgery Training
• Medical Simulation

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of virtual and online learning in surgical training.
• Assessing the adequacy of these methods for developing fundamental robotic surgical skills is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if quality-assured e-learning is sufficient for preparing individuals to perform a basic robotic surgical task.
• To determine the effectiveness of different didactic preparation formats for robotic surgery skills acquisition.

Main Methods:

• A prospective, randomized, multi-center study involving 47 participants with no prior robotic surgery experience.
• Participants were assigned to four groups with varying didactic preparations, including e-learning and published manuscripts.
• The study involved a robotic suturing and anastomosis task with performance assessment based on experienced surgeons' benchmarks.

Main Results:

• No participants achieved the defined proficiency benchmarks for the robotic vesico-urethral anastomosis task.
• Performance was objectively assessed based on procedure steps, errors, and critical errors compared to experienced surgeons.

Conclusions:

• Proficiency-based e-learning effectively minimizes critical errors in basic suturing and knotting tasks.
• Current quality-assured online learning strategies are inadequate for developing essential robotic suturing and anastomosis skills.