Anesthesia Teaching for Undergraduates; Bringing the Operating Theatre to the Simulation Lab: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Background: Simulation-based education has become more prominent in recent years. In our university, we have begun to use simulation at various levels in the curriculum. Objectives: We decided to utilize simulation to meet the challenges of teaching medical students in the operating theatre, which have slowly risen over the years at our place of practice. Methods: A total of 120 final year medical students posted to anesthesia were divided into two groups and exposed to two different operating theatre (OT) teaching environments: Group I: Actual OT and group 2: Simulated OT. The performance of the two groups on 25 MCQs was compared using the chi-square test and independent t-test. Results: The chi-square test showed no significant difference between the groups in the number of students who passed the test at the end of the posting [χ2 (2, N = 119) = 2.375, P > 0.05]. An independent t-test carried out on the test scores showed that the actual OT group (M = 10.15, SD = 2.284) performed better than the simulated OT group (M = 9.04, SD = 2.528), and it was statistically significant [t (112) = 3.265, P = 0.001]. Conclusions: There was no difference in terms of pass or fail between the two groups suggesting that OT learning could be simulated. However, the actual OT group had overall better scores statistically. Thus the depth of learning may be better with actual OT teaching, especially because the teaching and learning occur in the real environment. Until further research suggests that simulated OT can replace actual OT learning for undergraduates, we plan to use the simulated OT as a bridge towards actual OT learning.