title: Practice Makes Perfect: Correlations Between Prior Experience in High-level Athletics and Robotic Surgical Performance Do Not Persist After Task Repetition.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Robotic surgical skill development is central to training in urology as well as in other surgical disciplines. Here, we describe a pilot study assessing the relationships between robotic surgery simulator performance and 3 categories of activities, namely, videogames, musical instruments, and athletics.
  
  
  METHODS
  A questionnaire was administered to preclinical medical students for general demographic information and prior experiences in surgery, videogames, musical instruments, and athletics. For follow-up performance studies, we used the Matchboard Level 1 and 2 modules on the da Vinci Skills Simulator, and recorded overall score, time to complete, economy of motion, workspace range, instrument collisions, instruments out of view, and drops. Task 1 was run once, whereas task 2 was run 3 times.
  
  
  METHODS
  All performance studies on the da Vinci Surgical Skills Simulator took place in the Simulation Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
  
  
  METHODS
  All participants were medical students at the Geisel School of Medicine. After excluding students with prior hands-on experience in surgery, a total of 30 students completed the study.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found a significant correlation between athletic skill level and performance for both task 1 (p = 0.0002) and task 2 (p = 0.0009). No significant correlations were found for videogame or musical instrument skill level. Students with experience in certain athletics (e.g., volleyball, tennis, and baseball) tended to perform better than students with experience in other athletics (e.g., track and field). For task 2, which was run 3 times, this association did not persist after the third repetition due to significant improvements in students with low-level athletic skill (levels 0-2).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study suggests that prior experience in high-level athletics, but not videogames or musical instruments, significantly influences surgical proficiency in robot-naive students. Furthermore, our study suggests that practice through task repetition can overcome initial differences that may be related to a background in athletics. These novel relationships may have broader implications for the future recruitment and training of robotic surgeons and may warrant further investigation.
authors.affiliation: Geisel School of Medicine, Hanover, New Hampshire. Electronic address: Kevin.Shee.MED@dartmouth.edu.
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shee
authors.affiliation: Geisel School of Medicine, Hanover, New Hampshire.
authors.forename: Fady M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Ghali
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, New Hampshire.
authors.forename: Elias S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Hyams
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009146:Music; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D065287:Robotic Surgical Procedures / Q000193:education*; D013177:Sports; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D018910:Video Games
keywords: Practice-Based Learning and Improvement; robotic surgery; simulation; surgical education; surgical skills training