EXAMINATION OF THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT TRAINING METRICS ON PERFORMANCE OF A MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY TRANSFER TASK

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if there existed techniques to more efficiently train prospective surgeons the skills necessary to capably perform minimally invasive surgical procedures. Also, we wanted to know if trainees could be pushed to cognitively define a laparoscopic environment with a novel hand-eye relationship. To explore these questions, a simulation was setup wherein subjects would perform a laparoscopic transfer task and receive active feedback during training. Different subjects would receive different metrics as feedback and a comparison would be made between subjects with respect to standard metrics. Results of this experiment show that all subjects adapt to a laparoscopic environment and that they do so at different rates and to different proficiencies. The difference was shown to be statistically significant. It was concluded that the techniques we utilized were effective enough to claim as useful techniques to utilize in current training systems