Expanded Access to Video-Based Laparoscopic Skills Assessments: Ease, Reliability, and Accuracy.

Area of Science:

• Surgical Education
• Medical Simulation
• Laparoscopic Surgery

Background:

• Video-based assessments offer crucial feedback for surgical residents.
• Trained proctor assessments are costly and resource-intensive.
• Developing cost-effective assessment methods is vital for surgical training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the reliability, accuracy, and difficulty of untrained attending surgeons as raters for basic laparoscopic skills via video assessment.
• To compare the reliability and accuracy of two assessment tools: OSATS and MISTELS.

Main Methods:

• A national survey was distributed to 61 practicing general surgery attendings.
• Participants rated 2 laparoscopic peg transfer videos using OSATS and MISTELS.
• Raters' experience, favorability, and perceived ease of assessment were recorded.

Main Results:

• Substantial inter-rater reliability was achieved with both OSATS (k=0.75) and MISTELS (k=0.85).
• MISTELS demonstrated significantly higher accuracy (κ=0.18) compared to OSATS (κ=0.02).
• Despite limited prior experience, raters found video assessments easy and favorable.

Conclusions:

• Untrained faculty can reliably and accurately assess basic laparoscopic skills using video-based methods.
• MISTELS is a more accurate tool than OSATS for this type of assessment.
• Video-based assessments offer a scalable solution to enhance surgical trainee feedback.