Students' Interest in Surgery Affects Laparoscopic Practicing Performance

Methods:A laparoscopic simulation curriculum was introduced at Taipei Medical University, Wan-Fang Medical Center. Study participants included 36 sixth-year and 14 seventh-year students who were divided according to whether they had indicated an interest (group A) or not (group B) in surgery. The students had twice-a-week practice sessions for 2 weeks. They underwent baseline measurement (BM) before training and posttraining measurement (PTM). Self-guided practice on the simulator was allowed. The learning outcomes were assessed comparing the BM and PTM scores by using the interquartile range (IQR) test. We also tested the correlation between total score and number of self-guided practice sessions.Results:All study participants showed improvement. No differences were observed between BM and PTM scores and between 6th- and 7th-year medical students. Significant differences were found in PTM scores between groups A and B (P < .001). Analysis of variance with a post hoc test for different groups revealed that the PTMs were significantly higher for both the 6th- and 7th-year medical students in group A than for those in group B (P < .001). Total performance scores were improved with a higher number of self-guided practice sessions. Linear regression analysis demonstrated a significant correlation between the number of self-guided practice sessions and total performance score (P < .001).Conclusion:Those clerks and interns interested in surgery who had more sessions for self-guided practice, displayed more improvement than those not interested in surgery did. Improvement in performance correlated highly with trainees'' number of self-guided practice sessions.