Grading Surgical Skills Curricula and Training Facilities for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Abstract

In teaching hospitals all over the world, skills laboratories have been set up in order to train and assess minimally invasive surgical (MIS) skills. However, there are no generally accepted standards as to what an MIS skills laboratory should look like and how the training should be conducted. This study is an attempt to develop an international and consensus-based set of quality criteria for a skills laboratory for training MIS. Three quality domains for skills laboratory were defined: ‘personnel and resources’, ‘trainee motivation’ and ‘curriculum’. A list of consensus-based criteria, nine items per domain, was made. Twenty-three recognised experts in MIS rated each item on a 0 to 3 scale in the level of importance. The most important items per domain were: ‘personnel and resources’, the presence of a box trainer, a laparoscopic expert and the availability of financial resources; ‘trainee motivation’, mandatory training supervised by laparoscopic experts; and ‘curriculum’, the presence of a structured skills curriculum, dedicated time for training and a yearly evaluation of the skills of the resident. This consensus list can be used when setting up a skills laboratory, but also for verifying the quality of an existing laboratory. From there, the focus for new developments can be chosen.