Adding Safety Rules to Surgeon-Authored Virtual Reality Training

The Toolkit for Illustration of Procedures in Surgery (TIPS) is an open source virtual reality (VR) laparoscopic simulation-based training environment with force feedback. The TIPS-author is a content creation interface that allows a surgeon educator (SE) to assemble new laparoscopic training modules. New technology enables safety rules to be specified by the SE, automatically tracks specified safety errors, and summarizes and communicates achievements and errors to the surgical trainee.

The TIPS-author combines and initializes building blocks of anatomy with their physical properties, as selected by the SE from a database. The SE can add any safety rule that can be tested in terms of location, proximity, separation, clip count, and force. Errors are then automatically monitored during simulation and recorded as visual snapshots for feedback to the trainee. The TIPS was field tested at 2 surgical conferences, one before and one after adding the error snapshot feature.

Sixty-four respondents at 2 surgical conferences assessed the utility of TIPS on a Likert scale. While other ratings remained unchanged for an overall score of 5.24 of 7 (7 = very useful), the rating of the statement "The TIPS interface helps learners understand the force necessary to explore the anatomy" improved from 5.04 to 5.35 of 7 after the snapshot mechanism was added.

The ratings indicate the viability of the TIPS open source SE-authored surgical training units with safety rules. Presenting SE-determined procedural missteps via the snapshot mechanism at the end of the training increases perceived utility.