A Novel, Low-Fidelity, Low-Cost Residency "Simulation Festival" Competition

Simulation has rapidly expanded in obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) for teaching surgical skills, reinforcing medical knowledge and assessing surgical proficiency. Low-fidelity simulations are typically lower cost to produce and have been proven to be beneficial for surgical training. The aim of this study is to describe an innovative simulation competition among residency programs to develop, present, and share low-cost, low-fidelity surgical simulation.

We developed and executed a novel simulation competition in October 2022 at our annual military OB/GYN conference. All 9 military residency programs presented a unique, cost-effective simulation relevant to the field of OB/GYN. A 1-hour session was dedicated to showcasing these innovations. Participants were invited to complete a postevent survey. This study was deemed Institutional Review Board exempt.

A total of 111 people registered for our event. Seventy-seven individuals completed our postevent survey (69.4% response rate), comprising medical students (12.99%), residents (58.44%), and staff or fellows (28.57%). Most respondents reported that simulation holds substantial value in OB/GYN training (96.10%). All respondents expressed a desire for the event to be a recurring feature at future meetings. Among resident responders, 97.7% was either "very likely" or "likely" to incorporate one of the showcased simulations into their future resident academics. Fifteen respondents were actively involved in creating simulations for the festival, with the majority deeming the process either very easy (60.00%) or easy (33.33%), and all simulations were deemed highly reproducible (100.00%).

This event succeeded in nurturing innovative, cost-effective, and readily replicable simulations in the field of OB/GYN. This event can be replicated at meetings to foster novel simulation development.