Surgical skill training is a long and tedious process of acquiring fine motor skills. To overcome the drawbacks of the existing toolbox trainer systems, we develop, for the first time, a virtual basic laparoscopic skill trainer (VBLaST) whereby tasks, such as the ones available in the FLS toolbox system, may be performed on the computer.

SUMMARY Rural western Canada relies heavily on family physicians with enhanced surgical skills (ESS) for surgical services. The recent decision by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) to recognize ESS as a "community of practice" section offers a potential home akin to family practice anesthesia and emergency medicine. To our knowledge, however, a skill set for ESS in Canada has ne...

Surgery is a demanding field that relies on very grounded, technical skill [1]. Practice has repeatedly been shown to have a substantial effect on surgical skill and competency [2]. Practice requires time and effort that isn’t easily afforded during the present times with cut-backs in resident hours, a need for efficiency in the operating room, and a focus on patient well-being [1,3]. The old m...

Modern surgical trainees are often given written examinations to test their knowledge and decision-making skills. However, there exists no widely accepted method for objective evaluation of technical skill. The need for such a method is particularly evident in the young field of robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, where specific training methods have not been fully established and little...

PURPOSE The Japanese Urological Association, and Japanese Society of Endourology and ESWL have established the Endoscopic Surgical Skill Qualification System in urological laparoscopy. The system consists of a urological section as well as gynecology and general surgery sections. We present details of the Endoscopic Surgical Skill Qualification System and year 1 results. MATERIALS AND METHODS...

Many new skills are acquired during early childhood. Typical laboratory skill learning tasks are not applicable for developmental studies that involve children younger than 8 years of age. It is not clear whether young children and adults share a basic underlying skill learning mechanism. In the present study, the learning and retention of a simple grapho-motor pattern were studied in three age...

INTRODUCTION The study of expertise tends to focus on humans who can perform extraordinary feats. Although the way in which expertise is acquired is often characterized as similar to everyday skill acquisition, the attainment of basic numeracy skills is rarely considered in the same context as the attainment of expertise. It is clear, though, that average numeracy skills possess all the hallmar...

Athletes devote their lives to practicing their chosen sport so as to attain the highest level of skilled performance. A perennial question is why are some athletes better than others? Most debates on this issue reduce to genetics (natural abilities) vs differences in accumulated deliberative practice. In contrast, the target article under discussion here reports on a study that identified psyc...

OBJECTIVE Box model trainers have been used for many years to facilitate the improvement of laparoscopic skills. However, there are limited data available on box trainers and their impact on skill acquisition, assessed by virtual reality systems. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty-two Postgraduate Year 1 gynecology residents with no laparoscopic experience were randomly divided into one group that r...