RESEARCH ARTICLE Performance of central ve s

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground Central venous catheterization (CVC) is a basic clinical skill of doctors working in the departments of internal medicine, surgery, critical care, pediatrics, anesthesio-logy, and emergency. Prior studies had suggested that formal instruction in emergency skills is important, since it resulted in improved doctors ’ procedural competence and reduced the rate of fatal errors [1,2]. Unfortunately, many residents reported a lack of confidence in perfor-ming the invasive procedures to their patients [3]. Accord-ingly, CVC is taught to medical students during their rotation in our anesthesiology department for training these future residents to perform the procedure compe-tently in their career. In the beginning of their course, medical students re-ceived CVC simulation training. Similar to other studies [4,5], we use a checklist as the competence assessment tool for CVC. After passing the assessment, then the simulator-trained medical students performed CVCs o