Simulation-based training for burr hole surgery instrument recognition
David B. Clarke, Nelofar Kureshi, Murray Hong, Maryam Sadeghi & Ryan C. N. D’Arcy
Very early in our journey we were fortunate to have two great advisors Dr. David B Clarke and Dr. Ryan D’Arcy. They are no strangers to healthcare simulation. In fact they were part of the clinical and research team that validated the Neurosurgery Simulator that was licensed to CAE Healthcare and launched as NeuroVR in 2016. The simulator was developed by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in collaboration with clinicians from teaching hospitals in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia, the simulator is currently in use at 15 sites and has been validated in published clinical studies.
In this new study, which used PeriopSim as the delivery tool, here are two of the most impactful excerpts:
“This was a randomized control trial of first year residents from neurosurgery residency training programs across Canada. Eighteen neurosurgery trainees were recruited to test two simulation-based applications: PeriopSim™ Instrument Trainer and PeriopSim™ for Burr Hole Surgery. The intervention was game-based simulation training for learning neurosurgical instruments and applying this knowledge to identify correct instruments during a simulated burr hole surgery procedure.”
It was a small study and the results were foundational showing our learning method worked where “Participants showed significant overall improvement in total score (p < 0.0005), number of errors (p = 0.019) and time saved (p < 0.0005), over three testing sessions when using the PeriopSim™ Instrument Trainer. Participants demonstrated further performance-trained improvements when using PeriopSim™ Burr Hole Surgery.”
