Objective assessment of laparoscopic skills: dual-task approach.

Background: Assessment of surgical performance is often accomplished with traditional methods that often provide only subjective data. Trainees who perform well on a simulator in a controlled environment may not perform well in a real operating room environment with distractions. This project uses the ideas of dual-task methodology and applies them to the assessment of performance of laparoscopic surgical skills. The level of performance on distracting secondary tasks while trying to perform a primary task becomes an indirect but objective measure of the surgical skill of the trainee.

Methods: Nine surgery residents and 6 experienced laparoscopic surgeons performed 3 primary tasks on a laparoscopic virtual reality simulator (camera position, grasping, and cholecystectomy) while being distracted by 3 secondary tasks (counting beeps, selective responses, and mental arithmetic). Completion time and error rates were recorded for each combination of tasks.

Results: When performed separately, time to completion and error rates for primary and secondary tasks were similar for learners and experts. When performing the tasks simultaneously, learners had more errors than experts. Error rates increased for learners when distracting tasks became more difficult or required more attention. Expert surgeons maintained consistent error rates despite the increasing difficulty of task combinations.

Conclusions: The use of dual-task methodology may help trainers to identify which surgical trainees require more preparation before entering the real operating room environment. Expert surgeons are capable of maintaining performance levels on a primary task in the face of distractions that may occur in the operating room.