Observing errors vs. expertise during surgical training

Observing errors vs. expertise during surgical training G Buckingham¹, J Haverstock², L van Eimeren³, S Cristancho⁴, K Faber⁵, M-E Lebel⁶, M A Goodale⁷
¹Psychology, Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom ²Division of Orthopaedics, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada ³Schulich School of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada ⁴Centre for Education Research and Innovation, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada ⁵Lawson Health Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada ⁶Hand and Upper Limb Centre, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada ⁷The Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, ON, Canada Contact: g.buckingham@hw.ac.uk
Several recent findings have demonstrated that the observation of a visuomotor task leads to more rapid learning of that skill (Mattar & Gribble, 2005). Watching the performance of others is an important part of surgical training, with medical students routinely observing expert surgeons to learn new procedures. Recent work, however, suggests that errors are crucial for observational learning (Brown et al., 2012; Buckingham et al., under review). We examined medical students’ performance in a surgical training task on a virtual reality simulator. The trainees then watched a video of either a novice individual or an expert surgeon performing the surgical task on the simulator. After watching the video, the medical students then performed the simulator training task immediately after, and one week later. Individuals who watched the error-laden novice performance were significantly better than those who watched the error-free expert surgeon’s performance when they returned one week later, across a number of metrics. These findings suggest that observing errors may be crucial for the rapid learning of a wide variety of visuomotor skills, and suggest error-based learning should feature prominently in early training of complex skills.

Up Home