Low-Fidelity Haptic Simulation Increases the Transfer of Peripheral Blood Sampling Skills in Novice Medical Students

Abstract

Background: The transfer of skills into clinical practice is a major issue in medical education. This study compared the transfer of skills related to peripheral blood collection between naïve medical students simulation-trained or not before performing on real patients. Methods: 30 novice medical students attended to a lecture addressing peripheral blood collection for laboratory tests. The intervention group trained procedural skills with low-fidelity haptic simulation and role-playing. Controls simulated basic life support. Each student performed six blood sampling attempts in real patients in another occasion. Performance was rated on a scoring checklist. Self-efficacy was measured after the lecture, immediately before and after blood sampling procedures. Results: Success rates were significantly higher in the intervention 82% than in the control group (68%; p = 0.037). Significantly lesser technical errors were observed in the intervention group. Self-efficacy scores increased significantly in both groups after blood collection procedures and correlated significantly with individual success rates (rho = 0.50). Conclusion: An educational intervention consisting of low-fidelity simulation and role-playing added to a lecturebased teaching session on peripheral blood sampling was associated with increased transfer of procedural skills. Self-efficacy was positively associated with individual success rates.

Development of Unity Simulator for Epidural Insertion Training for Replacing Current Lumbar Puncture Simulators

“…Interchangeable grippers allow for user input customization ensuring that a wide variety of interactions. The epidural simulator requires a human interface device that resembles a real needle (i.e., high fidelity), ensuring that skills developed during training are transferrable to the real world [ 16 ]. We have designed a custom gripper replacement with the generic 4 mm screw Faceplate Adapter.…”