The State of Simulation in Endoscopy Education: Continuing to Advance Toward Our Goals

Abstract

Since the introduction of flexible endoscopy in the late 1960s, training programs have faced challenges with endoscopy education. Among these hurdles of traditional endoscopic training are the negative financial impact training poses to a program (in the form of ecreased productivity and lost revenues), the increased isks to patient comfort and safety, as well as the adminstrative responsibility to ensure that competency by rainees is assessed and documented. Over the past deade, these hurdles have become even more challenging s procedure reimbursements have grown increasingly ighter and expectations to document quality and cometency metrics have grown. One potential answer to hese challenges is the use of simulation during training. ith the advent of computer simulation and ex vivo nimal models, there has been renewed interest and reearch in the area of endoscopy simulation with the opes of overcoming some of these hurdles by reducing raining duration, providing a risk-free environment for raining, and allowing for objective measures of skills and ompetency. Despite these research efforts, only a fracion of these hopes have been realized to date.