Does an aptitude for surgery exist and can we predict it? An experimental study

Area of Science:

• Surgical Education
• Medical Training
• Human Factors in Surgery

Background:

• Optimizing surgical quality, safety, and effectiveness necessitates selecting surgeons with high performance potential.
• Understanding predictive factors for surgical performance is crucial at various training stages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify basic skills and traits predicting surgical performance.
• To determine driving factors in different surgical training phases.

Main Methods:

• A randomized crossover trial involving 87 physicians and 239 medical students from January to December 2021.
• Participants underwent neuropsychological testing and both conventional and robot-assisted laparoscopic surgical training.
• Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the latent factor structure of psychomotor skills, personality, and motivation.

Main Results:

• Training performance was significantly explained by the interaction of psychomotor skills, personality, and motivation (8.2% variance in students, 23.8% in physicians).
• In students, motivation (8.4%) and personality (4.5%) were the strongest predictors, with psychomotor skills contributing 1.1%.
• In physicians, psychomotor skills (27.4%) were the primary predictor, followed by personality (10.5%) and motivation (2.3%).

Conclusions:

• Surgical performance is influenced by general individual traits unrelated to surgery itself.
• Early selection of surgeons based on predictive traits is feasible and potentially necessary for future healthcare demands.