VR-in-a-Box: Surgical Simulator - Supplementing Surgical Training for medical students and residents using a low-cost virtual reality simulator with real-time haptic feedback

I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, there has been a verifiable increase in the use of virtual reality (VR) simulation technology for clinical purposes. Although results are varied, studies have shown evidence that the use of VR in surgical training results in improvement in practicing surgical skills. Unfortunately, such simulators are expensive and thus are not targeted for use by student populations outside of their training facility. Yet, given the current climate of budget reductions and reduced allocations to aid hospitals to pay for training of new residents and medical students, the development of effective, but low-cost training options, is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. This is especially true given that currently mandated restrictions on the maximum hours in which a resident can participate in clinical activities correspondingly decreases exposure to the number of operations performed by general surgery residents. As such, the specific aims of this project are 1) to examine the efficacy of a low-cost Virtual Reality surgical simulator for training residents and medical students assigned to Grady Memorial Hospital and 2) to compare the learning effect between two training schedules using the low-cost VR surgical simulator on improving practicing surgical skills. Twelve student subjects, distributed between training residents and medical students, will be recruited for this study. Subjects will be randomly assigned to three training groups (distributed VR training group, massed VR training group, and baseline group). In the distributed VR group, subjects will receive additional VR training for 5 sessions per week, 30 minutes per session for 6 weeks; in the massed group, subjects will receive additional VR training for 2 sessions per week, 75 minutes per session for 6 weeks; and the baseline group will receive no additional VR training. All subjects will continue participating in their regular operating room training activities. All subjects will be assessed throughout the study period: prior to training, at the end of the 3 rd week of training, immediately after the completion of the 6-week training period, and 3 weeks after the training cessation. The results from this study are designed to provide quantitative results to document the efficacy of a low-cost VR surgical training system by comparing the learning effects between two practice schedules of VR training as compared to a baseline. This will lay the preliminary groundwork for securing additional funding to research the design of adaptive Virtual Reality training systems for individualizing the learning cycle …