Andrea V Kwong, MASc1, Oscar M Crespin, MD1, Ilay Habaz1, Pietro Riva, MD2, Ethan Weiss1, Silvana Perretta, MD2, Lee L Swanstrom, MD3, Allan Okrainec, MD1, Eran Shlomovitz, MD1. 1University Health Network, Toronto, Canada, 2IRCAD-IHU, Strasbourg, France, 3The Oregon Clinic, Portland, United States
Background: As the Fundamentals of Endoscopic Surgery (FES) system was primarily designed for high stakes evaluation purposes, there is an urgent need for an affordable, easily accessible tool for trainee practice of therapeutic endoscopic skills. We previously reported on the adaptation of the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) trainer box to the practice of six basic therapeutic endoscopic skills. This low-cost trainer could potentially serve as an easily accessible practice and evaluation tool for flexible endoscopy. In gathering evidence to validate this endoscopic trainer box, performance was compared between experts and novices.
Methods: Participants (n=58) included general surgery and gastroenterology staff, fellows, and residents. Experts were identified as those who had performed >200 diagnostic procedures and/or perform >30% of endoscopic procedures for therapeutic purposes. Novices included those who did not meet either of these criteria. Participants were evaluated on six tasks designed for the adapted endoscopic trainer box: (1) forward view peg transfer, (2) retroflexion view peg transfer, (3) puncturing, (4) snaring, (5) clipping, and (6) cannulation. A maximum of 5 minutes was given to complete each task. Task completion time was compared between experts and novices using Mann-Whitney tests (p<0.05).
Results: Overall, experts required significantly less time to complete each of the tasks on the endoscopic trainer box when compared to novices (Table 1).
Conclusions: The adaptation of the FLS trainer box for flexible endoscopic tasks was demonstrated to be useful in differentiating novices and experts. This study further contributes to the validation of this trainer as a cost efficient practice and evaluation tool for flexible endoscopy skills. Inclusion of a scoring system that incorporates errors/penalties for the tasks may further differentiate expert and novice performance on the trainer box.
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 80871
Program Number: P290
Presentation Session: Poster (Non CME)
Presentation Type: Poster
