Acquisition of flexible cystoscopy skills on a virtual reality simulator by experts and novices

• Published in: BJU international 2010-01, Vol.105 (2), p.234-239
• Main Authors: Schout, Barbara M.A., Muijtjens, Arno M.M., Hendrikx, Ad J.M., Ananias, Hildo J.K., Dolmans, Valérie E.M.G., Scherpbier, Albert J.J.A., Bemelmans, Bart L.H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Clinical Competence - standards; Computer Simulation; Computer-Assisted Instruction - methods; Computer-Assisted Instruction - standards; construct validity; Cystoscopy - methods; Cystoscopy - standards; cysto‐urethroscopy; Education, Medical, Continuing - methods; Educational Measurement; Humans; learning curve; Medical sciences; Medical Staff, Hospital - education; Nephrology. Urinary tract diseases; Pilot Projects; simulation; training model; urology; validation; virtual reality
• ISSN: 1464-4096; 1464-410X
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2009.08733.x

Study Type – Therapy (case control)
Level of Evidence 3b OBJECTIVE To assess the construct validity of the URO MentorTM (Simbionix Corp., Cleveland, OH, USA) virtual reality training model for several variables of skills training in cysto‐urethroscopy, addressing two research questions: (i) Does training on the URO Mentor significantly improve novices’ performance in terms of time, trauma, areas inspected and Global Rating Scale (GRS) score?; (ii) is discrimination between different levels of expertise possible using the URO Mentor? METHODS Thirty experts and 50 novices performed seven tasks on the URO Mentor during one training session. The first, fourth and seventh tasks were ‘test tasks’ to evaluate participants’ performance. The simulator recorded procedure time and trauma; a supervisor scored which areas were inspected and gave scores on the GRS. A two‐way analysis of variance with repeated‐measures test was used to analyse experts’ and novices’ performances, with P