WCE 2017: Urology Residents’ Experience and Attitude Towards Surgical Simulation: Presenting Our Four Year Experience With A Multi Institutional, Multi Modality Simulation Model
Dr. Chow provides evidence from a recent survey that states 90% of Urology program directors believe that simulation training should be incorporated into residency training. However, only 78% of residency programs have laparoscopic simulators and < 20% have endoscopic simulators. Dr. Chow indicates that barriers to the availability of these simulators are the cost burden, need for advanced planning, and faculty willingness to participate.
In this study, the surgical simulators included greenlight photovaporization of the prostate, endoscopic stone extraction, laparoscopic peg transfer, 3D laparoscopy rope pass, transobturator sling placement, intravesical injection, HD video system trainer (VITOM), vasectomy, and Urolift. All of these were monitored by expert faculty members.
Dr. Chow and his team surveyed the users of the simulators on a scale from 1−10. They found that the median rating of each exercise’s usefulness ranged from 7.5 to 9, and the cumulative median scores of the course remained high over the four years: time limit (9/10), faculty instruction (9/10), ease of use (9/10), face validity (8/10) and overall course (9/10). Most participants (67%) indicated that simulation training should be a requirement of Urology residency and 63 (97%) of the participants viewed the lab as beneficial to their education
Dr. Chow concludes that their multi-institutional, multi-modality workshop model is a novel design that offers valuable training experience for residents. Their surveys show high ratings of usefulness for each exercise and most participating residents believed that this model is a valuable training experience that should be a requirement for Urology residency. Finally, Dr. Chow mentions that participant feedback is crucial and that it helps improve the quality of the surgical simulation experience.
Presented by: Alexander Chow, MD
Authors: Alexander Chow, Benjamin A. Sherer, Emily Yura, Stephanie Kielb, Ervin Kocjancic; Scott Eggener, Thomas Turk; Sangtae Park; Sarah Psutka; Michael Abern, Kalyan Latchamsetty; Christopher Coogan
Affiliation: Rush University Medical Center, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of California San Francisco & Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Written by Egor Parkhomenko, Department of Urology, University of California-Irvine at 35th World Congress of Endourology– September 12-16, 2017, Vancouver, Canada.