Regional anaesthesia is the performance of spinal, epidural or peripheral nerve blocks to allow patients to undergo surgery awake and to provide post-operative pain relief. Anaesthetists inject local anaesthetic using specialist needles close to nerves to prevent transmission of pain. Hand-held ultrasound is often used by anaesthetists to direct these needles to the correct position i.e. close to, but not in the nerve itself. If the needle is not adequately seen using the hand-held ultrasound it may pierce the nerve causing permanent nerve damage and significant patient harm. Within the time and resource constraints of postgraduate medical training, it would be advantageous to optimise expertise acquisition of practical skills with a cheap, self-directed educational intervention. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether gaze training is associated with improved performance of an ultrasound-guided needle task. The investigators hypothesise that improved gaze control will translate to better technical performance of an ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia task.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
OTHER
Masking
DOUBLE
Enrollment
43
A training module in gaze training for peripheral nerve blockade
A phase of discovery learning guided by novice operators themselves
Change in Composite Error Score
Objective error scoring of performance at needling task
Time frame: Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention was undertaken). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration.
Change in Global Rating Scale
Objective performance scoring of needling task, scored from 0-35, higher scores indicating better task performance.
Time frame: Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration.
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