Intuitively, this can only improve psychomotor surgical skill training for surgeons and thereby, improve procedural safety and efficacy for patients. These investigators have assisted in the development of a cystoscopy and transurethral resection simulator and demonstrated content, face, and construct validity. Their construct validity assessment would be more powerful if they could show that, in addition to being able to distinguish medical students from residents in the simulated endoscopic procedures, the performance evaluation could also distinguish between residents and experienced endoscopic surgeons. This would then provide evidence for using this simulator for assessment of skill proficiency. Then the next step in assessing this simulator will be to determine if the performance evaluation on the simulator correlates to the surgeons' performance of the same procedure in the operating room. This predictive validity would then move the simulator from being just a training device to one that could be used for assessment of a surgeon's proficiency in a particular clinical procedure. It would also provide a format in which urologists, who have limited clinical activity in some of the endoscopic procedures, can practice these and maintain an acceptable level of proficiency.

Oliver Reicha, Margarita Nollb, Christian Gratzkea, Alexander Bachmanna, Raphaela Waidelicha, Michael Seitza, Boris Schlenkera, Reinhold Baumgartnerb, Alfons Hofstettera and Christian G. Stiefa

Urology 67(6):1144-1148, 2006

Written by Elspeth M. McDougall, MD, a Contributing Editor with UroToday.

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