TU5.3 Surgical Simulation – Does it improve the undergraduate surgical experience?

Abstract

Abstract Aims Many final year undergraduate students rotating through surgery in our DGH have had their clinical experience adversely affected by COVID due to missed or cancelled patient contact, absence, or cancelled placements earlier in the curriculum. We sought to improve the experience by designing a new simulation programme of acute surgical presentations to become embedded in the teaching schedule and to audit the feedback from this and make improvements. Methods We held a small focus group with FYs and medical students to identify surgical presentations that they would benefit from practice on. We wrote a package of simulated cases including “unwell pancreatitis”, “wound dehiscence” and “post op pyrexia”. All scenarios had the aim of encouraging A-E assessment by the student pitched at incoming-FY1 level, and available equipment in the SIM lab includes SIM man, real-time obs, and general ward equipment. Scenarios were written to include multidisciplinary input from nursing, anaesthetic and surgical colleagues and include flexible options depending on student performance. The hospital resus officer helped to run the scenarios. Results The scenarios were run with 4 consecutive blocks of students. All feedback was positive with all students grading feedback as “very good” or “excellent”. Other feedback included “more scenarios” and “helps prepare for FY1”. Small improvements were made to the written documentation through PDSA cycles over the 4 blocks and are now embedded in the curriculum. Conclusions Availability of surgical simulation helped students to become more confident in A-E assessment of unwell surgical patients despite loss of patient interactions due to COVID.