Determining the efficacy of an immersive trainer for arthroscopy skills.

The present study examined the effectiveness of an immersive arthroscopic simulator for training naive participants to identify major anatomical structures and manipulate the arthroscope and probe. Ten psychology graduate students engaged in five consecutive days of practice sessions with the arthroscopic trainer. Following each session, participants were tested to see how quickly and accurately they could identify 10 anatomical landmarks and manipulate the arthroscope and probe. The results demonstrated steady learning on both tasks. For the anatomy task, participants correctly identified an average of 7.7 out of 10 structures correctly in the first session and 9.5 in the last. During the manipulation task, participants collided 53.5 times with simulated tissues in the first session and 13.2 times during the final session. Participants (n=9) also demonstrated minimal performance degradation when tested 4 weeks later. These data suggest that the immersive arthroscopic trainer might be useful as an initial screening or training tool for beginning medical students.