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Expertise in perception during robotic surgery (ExPeRtS): What we see and what we say
Courtney A Green1, Joseph Lin2, Rana Higgins3
1Department of Surgery, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St. SW Rochester, MN, 55905, USA.
Background:
Given the challenges of teaching in robotic operating rooms, we sought to investigate the language of perceptual expertise used by robotic surgeons, in an effort to improve current approaches to robotic training.
Methods:
Expert robotic surgeons reviewed 8 anonymous video clips portraying key portions of two robotic general surgery procedures and their comments were recorded and transcribed. Using content analysis, each transcript was double-coded and reconciled using a consensus developed codebook.
Results:
Seventeen expert robotic surgeons participated and comments formed two primary themes: visual comprehension and surgical technique. Surgeons minimally used tactile language. Risk avoidance was a second-order theme dominating language used.
Conclusions:
Experts occasionally used tactile language and emphasized risk avoidance as they observed robotic surgery. Despite the need to communicate perceptual expertise to trainees in robotic surgery, tactile language was not exhibited by expert surgeons, revealing an important future area of focus for intraoperative teaching skills.
