The use of observation to improve surgical task performance

Abstract

While the number of techniques and procedures that surgical trainees must learn is increasing, opportunities for trainees to practice the necessary skills on patients is decreasing; the COVID-19 pandemic further limited these learning opportunities. There is a need to explore additional ways for trainees to practice and improve their performance on surgical tasks. Observing others perform tasks can improve a learner’s own performance of a task, but it is unclear how well current evidence applies to improving surgical task performance as much of the existing evidence supporting the use of observation is for non-surgical tasks. This thesis explores the influence of observing someone else demonstrate tasks on learner’s own performance of tasks relevant to surgical training. Through three experiments, we explored the influence of the type of demonstrator that a learner observes (e.g., someone who is experienced or inexperienced), and whether or not tasks that encourage the learner to think more about the quality of a demonstrator’s performance further influences the learner’s performance. The findings suggest that for learners who are new to a task, observing an experienced demonstrator is more helpful for improving performance than observing an inexperienced demonstrator. Prompting learners to think more about the quality of the demonstrator’s performance, either by requiring them to judge the demonstrator’s performance or by providing them with an expert’s judgment of the demonstrator’s performance, does not further influence the learner’s performance. The findings from this thesis provide insights into how surgical educators can optimize learner’s performance improvements on surgical tasks using observation. This thesis also provides evidence for an effective way for learners to practice surgical tasks, either in-person or remotely, before performing those tasks on patients.