The IMPACTTM Surgical Skills Trainer: Using Deliberate Practice to Maintain Specialized Surgical Knowledge and Skills While on Deployment

While on deployment, many military surgeons spend the bulk of their time performing general and/or trauma surgery. With combat deployments averaging 12-18 months, such prolonged lapses in practice can degrade the surgeons’ specialized knowledge and skills. This becomes a major problem upon their return stateside, when they are expected to resume their specialty duties with little or no re-credentialing. The envisioned product of this SBIR is the IMPACTTM Surgical Skills Trainer (IMPACT-SST), a deployable training program that will help military surgeons maintain their specialty knowledge and skills. During Phase II, Aptima will develop several cognitive skills training modules that will supplement the American College of Surgeons (ACS)-accredited Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery training curriculum. Next, Aptima will develop a deployable, SCORM-conformant, multimedia training tool that leverages the deliberate practice approach to complex skill acquisition and maintenance. IMPACT-SST will fuse multimedia instruction, practical application exercises, diagnostic feedback, guided self-reflection, and video annotation to enhance the learning experience. Finally, Aptima will rigorously evaluate IMPACT-SST using William Beaumont Hospital’s advanced laparoscopic surgery simulation center. The end result will be an empirically-validated training curriculum that minimizes knowledge and skill decay, and an accompanying suite of performance measurement tools for re-credentialing purposes.