Anesthesia
Conditions
Brief summary
Regional anaesthesia is the performance of spinal, epidural or peripheral nerve blocks to allow patients to undergo surgery awake and to provide post-operative pain relief. Anaesthetists inject local anaesthetic using specialist needles close to nerves to prevent transmission of pain. Hand-held ultrasound is often used by anaesthetists to direct these needles to the correct position i.e. close to, but not in the nerve itself. If the needle is not adequately seen using the hand-held ultrasound it may pierce the nerve causing permanent nerve damage and significant patient harm. Within the time and resource constraints of postgraduate medical training, it would be advantageous to optimise expertise acquisition of practical skills with a cheap, self-directed educational intervention. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether gaze training is associated with improved performance of an ultrasound-guided needle task. The investigators hypothesise that improved gaze control will translate to better technical performance of an ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia task.
Interventions
OTHERGaze training
A training module in gaze training for peripheral nerve blockade
OTHERDiscovery learning
A phase of discovery learning guided by novice operators themselves
Sponsors
University of Nottingham
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
DOUBLE (Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths (STEM) students who are capable of giving informed consent
Exclusion criteria
* Previous experience of gaze training or eye tracking software * Previous experience of regional anaesthesia needling tasks
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in Composite Error Score | Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention was undertaken). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration. | Objective error scoring of performance at needling task |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in Global Rating Scale | Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration. | Objective performance scoring of needling task, scored from 0-35, higher scores indicating better task performance. |
Other
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in Task completion time | Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention was undertaken). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration. | Time taken to finish needling task |
| Change in Fixation durations | Undertaken during ultrasound assessment 1 (before training intervention) and during ultrasound assessment 2 (which will occur 10 minutes after the training intervention was undertaken). Each assessment will be 15 minutes in duration. | The total duration in seconds during the task that the participant spends engaging fixation visual behaviour in pre-defined areas of interest during the needling task |
Contacts
Primary ContactDavid W Hewson, MBBS
Outcome results
None listed