R. Munyaneza1, R. Rivielo2, F. Ntirenganya1 1National University Of Rwanda,Surgery,Butare, SOUTHERN, Rwanda 2Brigham And Women’s Hospital,Boston, MA, USA
Introduction: Teaching surgical skills has increasingly been preferred in the simulation laboratory than in the operative room for skills acquisition to surgical residents. However few studies investigating the adequate method of teaching have been done. Massed and distributed practices are important methods in teaching physical tasks and may be important in learning surgical skills.
Methods: : 32 residents and senior clerks in surgery were recruited and randomly assigned to massed group (3 hours training for 1 day) and distributed group (1 hour training per day for 3 days). They were taught ultrasound guided core needle biopsy on a high fidelity breast simulator. They all performed a test before and after the training and an evaluation of skill retention was done one month after completion of the training. Analysis of grades obtained was done and p value ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results:There was no statistically significant difference between the grades obtained by both groups in the pretest (p=0.726) and the posttest (p=0.635). Both groups performed better in comparison of the results obtained in the pretest and the posttest (p=0.000), there were no significant difference in the evaluation of skills retention after one month following the training between the two groups (p=0.273).
Conclusion:The results of this study showed that trainees retained the skill of ultrasound guided core needle biopsy on a breast simulator the same way if trained under a massed or distributed training schedule, both methods can be adopted in our settings for teaching surgical skills.