Abstract
Purpose :
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)'s requirements for ophthalmology residency training programs specify that a surgical skills development resource be available to residents. A wet lab course was developed that blends formal didactic teaching with hands-on surgical training and timely individualized feedback on developing surgical skills, incorporating the Kitaro DryLab and WetLab kits.
Methods :
A six-week course was developed for PGY-2 and PGY-3 ophthalmology residents. Each week began with a one-hour didactic session on selected critical steps of phacoemulsification cataract surgery and related practical perioperative and intraoperative considerations. Residents were subsequently accompanied by faculty to the wet lab for demonstration of the same critical steps on the Kitaro DryLab/WetLab kit. Residents were then required to practice and submit video of their performance of the specified technique for faculty evaluation. Faculty reviewed the video off-line for objective assessment of specific required surgical competencies and provided individualized written and verbal feedback on resident performance.
Results :
Video submissions from completed assignments demonstrated that the residents were able to practice, in a wet lab setting, wound construction, capsulorhexis, nucleus disassembly, cortical cleanup, and intraocular lens insertion in a way that closely resembled operating room experience.
Conclusions :
This is the first study to describe a cataract surgery training curriculum based on the Kitaro DryLab and WetLab cataract surgery training kits. The Kitaro training kit provided an accurate, true-to-life model on which to practice the critical steps of phacoemulsification cataract surgery. Additional studies are needed to further evaluate whether implementation of this curriculum affects outcomes and efficiency in the operating room. Cataract surgery procedure times, vision-threatening complications, and non-vision-threatening complications data are currently being collected on surgical cases performed by residents trained using this curriculum, with outcomes analyses to follow after sufficient data have been amassed for comparison with data collected on surgical cases performed by residents trained prior to implementation of the new curriculum.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.