Abstract
Purpose :
Technical skills are critical to the practice of ophthalmology and other surgical fields. Visuospatial ability is associated with technical competency and outcome quality in spatially complex surgeries. While surgical instruction and practice improve technical skills, medical education does not provide explicit training to improve visuospatial abilities. Dance training has been associated with improved visuospatial abilities. We sought to evaluate the effects of formal ballet training on the technical surgical competence of medical students.
Methods :
Twenty pre-clinical medical students naive to dance or surgical training were divided 1:1 into dance-training and control groups. Students in the dance-training group received six 1.5-hour ballet lessons over a 2-month period at Koresh Dance Studio in Philadelphia. All subjects completed pre- and posttesting, in which they performed a wet lab bovine extraocular muscle recession. Procedure videos were graded by two ophthalmologists using a modified version of a previously validated surgical skills assessment tool, the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skill, and masked to group assignment and pretesting/posttesting status.
Results :
Technical surgical ability, as measured by wet lab skills lab testing, improved significantly in the dance group (mean change +12.6 points) compared to the control group (mean change +5.2 points), p=0.042. In a poststudy questionnaire, students in the dance group reported improvement in awareness of their body positioning in space as well as control over their own movements.
Conclusions :
Dance training for pre-clinical medical students can improve ophthalmology technical surgical ability. Principles from the field of dance, which focus on body awareness and intention, can successfully be applied to surgical training. Further studies can examine the extent of impact of dance training on surgical ability.
This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.