A Randomised Educational Trial of Practicing One Versus Two Laparoscopic Procedural Modules in Simulator Training for Novices on Procedure-to-procedure Transferability

Surgical training programs using virtual reality simulators often only use basic skills training and the use of procedural training is very limited. Procedural training differs from basic skills training by requiring integration of isolated skills and decision making and planning components. However, it is unknown if it is necessary to practice all procedures before operating on actual patients or whether it is simply a matter of learning psychomotor skills and if these skills are transferable between different tasks.

The main hypothesis is that practicing a laparoscopic procedure on a simulator makes it easier to reach proficiency on a different laparoscopic procedure on the simulator because participants have already practiced the integration of isolated skills.