Abstract
Purpose
Surgical training is based on an apprenticeship model. This training can be divided broadly into three main categories: practical skills, knowledge and decision making. The operating room is the nexus of a large part of surgical teaching. The supervising surgeon imparts both practical teaching as well as didactic information to the trainee during surgical procedures. A large amount of decision making skills are also acquired in the OR. Indeed, a large part of the surgical teams time is spent in the operating room which makes it an ideal educational environment.
Bench model training is one teaching modality whereby the novice surgeon is taught surgical skills on life-like models. This practice enhances and accelerates the ability of the trainee to acquire fundamental, technical and surgical skills in the operating room. Whether bench model training provides an advantage on the ability of the trainee to acquire knowledge and decision making skills is unknown. Based on the motor learning theories, it is hypothesized that bench-model training will allow junior residents to be more interactive than trainees lacking similar active hands-on training. In this study, we examined whether bench model training provides an advantage on the ability of the trainee to acquire knowledge and decision making skills.
Method
30 junior surgical residents from various surgical divisions, with minimal knowledge of technical, procedural and cognitive skills related to the ulna bone fixation (primary task), were recruited in this study. 15 residents, randomly assigned, were given instructions and the benefit of practice on a bench model, and 15 were given instructions but not the chance to practice the skill on a bench model. All residents, while tested for their accuracy and time taken for ulna fixation (secondary task, decision making skills), were also verbally taught information on different aspects of primary bone healing. This information was evaluated by a multiple-choice test (knowledge acquisition).
Results
Residents who practiced outperformed those without practice in ulna fixation in accuracy (P<0.05) and total time (p=0.0409, n=30). The group that were given bench model training also scored higher (P<0.05) on the multiple choice questions than the group that did not have the benefit of bench model training prior to testing. This showed that the trained group of residents had better ability for knowledge acquisition while performing the procedure than the untrained group.
Conclusion
Bench model training can provide a means of enhancing learning, both in decision making skills and knowledge acquisition, in addition to motor learning activities inside the operating room.
