Building Endoscopy Skills on a Budget: Practical Low-Cost Simulators for Veterinary Endoscopy Teaching

Flexible gastrointestinal endoscopy in small animal veterinary practice requires psychomotor and visuospatial skills that differ from those used in open surgery. Training opportunities are often limited by reliance on live animals, which raises ethical and logistical challenges, while high-fidelity simulators remain cost-prohibitive for many programs. This creates a gap in accessible, early-stage endoscopy training. This Teaching Tip describes the development and implementation of a set of low-cost, modular simulation models designed to support acquisition of core endoscopic skills in veterinary learners. Two custom-built task trainers were designed for foreign body retrieval and polypectomy, and a biological model incorporated porcine gastrointestinal tissue into a life-size canine dummy to provide realistic anatomical context and haptic feedback. Although the biological model is based on canine anatomy, the technical skills targeted (endoscope navigation, instrument handling, and visuospatial coordination) are not species-specific and are readily transferable across veterinary and human endoscopy contexts. Training was delivered in a clinical skills laboratory using a station-based format with demonstration and supervised practice. The simulators enabled repeated, hands-on practice of key skills, including scope navigation, mucosal visualization, retroflexion, biopsy, and object retrieval, in a controlled, low-risk environment. Informal feedback from learners and faculty indicated high usability and perceived educational value, particularly for early skill acquisition. These low-cost simulation models offer an accessible and practical approach to veterinary endoscopy training, reducing reliance on live animals and expanding opportunities for deliberate practice in resource-limited settings. Future work should focus on formal validation and integration of objective performance assessment.