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Mithra’s lecture on the use of simulators for surgical training was insightful. Use of a more “real” environment for training using simulators makes sense as real surgery room environments are very different from a quite lonely simulator training room. The other important aspect stressed in the lecture was the feedback module which needs to include psychomotor and cognitive skills scoring. Especially interesting was the effect of fatigue on the psychomotor skills. Medicine has always falls in the realm of “practice” and experience plays a very important part for obvious reasons. I therefore found the concept of take home simulators particularly interesting as now we could have a freshly graduated surgeon performing surgeries with greater dexterity than expected. Also the use of gaming technology to produce these cost effective simulators can go a long way in improving the skill sets of surgeons. I found the article by PJ Fager, ‘The use of haptics in medicine’ very useful. You can find this article on PubMed. I think the article as it gives a very good overview of the subject and is simple to read.

Posted by Sheetal Shetty