Peer feedback through social media helps residents improve robotic surgery skills

Surgical residents who received anonymous feedback from their peers through a social networking site showed greater improvement in their robotic surgery skills than those who received no such feedback, a UCLA study shows. The study, published in the early online edition of Annals of Surgery, is the first to examine the use of social networking to facilitate peer review of surgical procedure videos, said senior author Dr. Jim Hu, the Henry E. Singleton Professor of Urology and director of robotic and minimally invasive surgery in the urology department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Research participants included 41 urology and gynecology residents from UCLA and the University of Michigan who used a robotic surgery simulator to sew and tie two tubes together. The residents were randomized into one of two groups — an intervention group in which the residents videotaped their efforts and posted the videos on a Google Plus group forum for anonymous review and comment by their peers in the same group, and a control group in which participants did not videotape or post their work for review. The residents performed the same simulated robotic procedure three times. The study found that residents in the intervention group improved their technique in subsequent attempts, had shorter completion times and earned better scores from the simulator for technical efficiency, accuracy and economy of motion. "We have demonstrated that social networking can be a viable forum ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news