Simulated surgeries are a great tool for training surgical residents — but does a tool exist to determine precisely when a surgical resident is ready to move on to operate on a human patient? With this question in mind, an interdisciplinary team of University of Houston computer scientists and medical researchers at the Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation and Education has developed a non-contact thermal imaging method that aims to do just that — by calculating the level of "nerves" of surgeons in training.
The non-contact thermal imaging method quantifies performance and physiological stress indicators by measuring facial perspiration, revealing the "sympathetic response," or how a person reacts to a threatening situation. The team measured the sympathetic responses of 17 surgeons — 10 experienced and 7 novices — while engaged in laparoscopic surgical training over the course of several months.
Throughout this three-year study, the researchers made a few key findings. First, they found that high stress levels did not deter novice surgeons from attempting to perform tasks at the same speed as experienced surgeons, even though they made many more errors. Current standards of surgical training grade only on time and error performance without taking "nerves" into account. Incorporating the testing of physiological reactions into the process could reveal whether surgeons have truly stopped internalizing the fear despite the dexterity they are able to exhibit externally in current training evaluation methods, researchers said.
"This study demonstrates that speed during skill acquisition is, in fact, a counterproductive metric and one that may need to be specifically interrupted to enhance training efficiency," said Dr. Barbara Bass, chair of the department of surgery at The Methodist Hospital. Therefore, cautioning trainees to slow down could actually help speed up the skill acquisition process.
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