The Impact of Immersive Virtual Reality Training in Thyroid Surgery

G.Gennimatas General Hospital12 enrolled

Overview

Up to this date, there have been no reports on virtual reality (VR) training in thyroid surgery. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of VR training in residents' education. Investigators intend to include general surgery residents in the trial, subgrouped in a VR training group and another one with traditional learning, utilizing a technical textbook as a control. For the purpose of this study, a commercial available VR mask will be given for training in the VR group. Randomization will be used to secure balance in the distribution of residents according to their experience. The task which will be examined include surgical steps from neck incision up to the placement of the C-IONM electrode and will be evaluated by a blinded FEBS certified endocrine surgeon in the operating theatre. Training superiority will be assessed by the outcome measures of Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS) score, need for the main surgeon to intervene (NTI), verbal answers and time to task completion. Participants will complete questionnaires regarding satisfaction of the whole educational process.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

Conditions

Virtual Reality Simulation Thyroid Surgery

Interventions

Virtual Reality Training in Thyroid SurgeryOTHER

Participants will use an application in an Immersive Virtual Reality environment. In this module, the participant will be the chief surgeon and will be guided to accomplise the first steps of thyroidectomy: from neck incision until continious neuromonitoring device placement in vagus nerve.

Convetional TrainingOTHER

This intervation consists of traditional methods of training. Participants will read specific chapters of a technical book specialised in Endocrine Surgery (Atlas of Thyroid Surgery- Alexander Shifrin). Also, they will be provided with videos of the clinic's archive which will support them with specific surgical steps : neck incision up to Continious Neuromonitoring Device placement on Vagus nerve.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Residents of the 2nd Surgical Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki * Residents who have completed their 1st year of training programm. Exclusion Criteria: * Disagreement of participants' randomisation * Prolonged surgical time of completion * Participant's experience beyond the included limits * Participants who are completely incapable of using VR devices or have specific helath restrictions of using these * Patients with complex thyroid disease such as recurrent disease, concominant primary hyperparathyroidism, lymph node disease or metastasis, Graves disease and intrathoracic goiter

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

OSATS Score

As the Primary Outcome Measure of the study will be the OSATS(Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills) score of participants in each group. Statistical significance of this score between groups will be measured.OSATS is a worlwide tool which measure surgical performance using 7 measurements and scoring system from 7 to 35. Its main advantage is that can measure with a quantitative manner surgical performance.

Time frame: From enrollment to the end of assesment of the FEBS certicied surgeon at 1 day