BACKGROUND: Surgery is a skill-driven discipline. While other high-stake professions with comparable cognitive and psychomotor skill requirements often use warm-up exercises for achieving better proficiency, the effects of such practice have not been investigated sufficiently in surgical tasks. DESIGN: Subjects performed standardized exercises as a preoperative warm-up, after which the standardized exercises were repeated in a randomized order. In a variation to investigate the generalizability of preoperative warm-up, the experimental group was allowed to warm-up with the standardized exercises, after which a different task (electrocautery simulation) was performed. To investigate the effect of warm-up on fatigue, participants were involved in eight sessions (four before night call, four after night call), after which the tasks were repeated. Results were analyzed using ANOVA to plot differences between warm-up and followup condition. RESULTS: All outcomes measures demonstrated statistically significant improvements after all of the post-warm-up exercises (p < 0.01), and were seen in all groups with differing experience levels. In addition, the simple warm-up exercises led to a significant increase in proficiency in followup electrocautery task for the experimental group when compared with the control group (p < 0.0001). There was also significant improvement in performance of the fatigued group to approximately baseline performance (p < 0.05), although they were not able to reach their optimal potential performance. CONCLUSION: Preoperative warm-up for 15 to 20 minutes with simple surgical exercises leads to a substantial increase in surgical skills proficiency during followup tasks.
RCT Entities:
BACKGROUND: Surgery is a skill-driven discipline. While other high-stake professions with comparable cognitive and psychomotor skill requirements often use warm-up exercises for achieving better proficiency, the effects of such practice have not been investigated sufficiently in surgical tasks. DESIGN: Subjects performed standardized exercises as a preoperative warm-up, after which the standardized exercises were repeated in a randomized order. In a variation to investigate the generalizability of preoperative warm-up, the experimental group was allowed to warm-up with the standardized exercises, after which a different task (electrocautery simulation) was performed. To investigate the effect of warm-up on fatigue, participants were involved in eight sessions (four before night call, four after night call), after which the tasks were repeated. Results were analyzed using ANOVA to plot differences between warm-up and followup condition. RESULTS: All outcomes measures demonstrated statistically significant improvements after all of the post-warm-up exercises (p < 0.01), and were seen in all groups with differing experience levels. In addition, the simple warm-up exercises led to a significant increase in proficiency in followup electrocautery task for the experimental group when compared with the control group (p < 0.0001). There was also significant improvement in performance of the fatigued group to approximately baseline performance (p < 0.05), although they were not able to reach their optimal potential performance. CONCLUSION: Preoperative warm-up for 15 to 20 minutes with simple surgical exercises leads to a substantial increase in surgical skills proficiency during followup tasks.
Authors: Jason Y Lee; Phillip Mucksavage; David C Kerbl; Kathryn E Osann; Howard N Winfield; Kanav Kahol; Elspeth M McDougall Journal: J Endourol Date: 2012-01-04 Impact factor: 2.942
Authors: C Güldner; A Orth; P Dworschak; I Diogo; M Mandapathil; A Teymoortash; U Walliczek-Dworschak Journal: Surg Endosc Date: 2017-03-09 Impact factor: 4.584
Authors: Thomas S Lendvay; Timothy C Brand; Lee White; Timothy Kowalewski; Saikiran Jonnadula; Laina D Mercer; Derek Khorsand; Justin Andros; Blake Hannaford; Richard M Satava Journal: J Am Coll Surg Date: 2013-04-11 Impact factor: 6.113