title: Teaching and assessing endoscopic sinus surgery skills on a validated low-cost task trainer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate a previously validated low-cost sinus surgery task trainer as a means of acquiring basic endoscopic sinus surgery skills and as an objective structured assessment of technical skills (OSATS) to determine procedural competency.
  
  
  METHODS
  Prospective blinded study.
  
  
  METHODS
  Medical students (N = 52) with no sinus surgery experience learned to perform nasal endoscopy and five specific sinus surgery tasks using the validated task trainer. Training included regimented expert instruction, peer instruction/observation, and experienced-based learning. Pre- and post-training video recordings of nasal endoscopy and five sinus surgery skills were obtained. Two blinded expert otolaryngologists compared pre- and post-training performance using a checklist and global rating scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Medical student post-training performance was significantly better than pre-training performance for each checklist item and global rating scale as calculated by paired t test (P < .001). Interrater reliability and internal consistency were confirmed by Kendall's coefficient of concordance and Cronbach's α calculations, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The sinus surgery task trainer provides an effective means of teaching and evaluating nasal endoscopy and basic sinus surgery skills for novice surgeons. With repeated practice, there was significant improvement in performance. An OSATS using the sinus surgery task trainer suggests that we can effectively measure endoscopic sinus surgery ability with the potential to reliably determine competency outside the operating room.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC 20007, USA. mattsteehler@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Matthew K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Steehler
authors.forename: Eugenia E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Hana
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Na
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Pfisterer
authors.forename: Hosai N
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Hesham
authors.forename: Sonya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Malekzadeh
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D004521:Educational Measurement; D004724:Endoscopy / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D010256:Paranasal Sinuses / Q000601:surgery*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D016037:Single-Blind Method