Evaluating the Impact of Supervision on Surgical Trainees Stress Response During Simulated Surgical Procedures; A Crossover Randomized Trial

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the cumulative impact of supervision on technical skills and surrogate stress markers in surgical trainees.DESIGN: This was a quasi-experimental crossover study to evaluate the impact of attending supervision on ortho-pedic trainee stress response during a simulated surgical procedure. Enrolled residents performed a proximal femoral nail module with the Precision OS system twice; once independently, and once under direct attending supervision, whilst wearing a heart rate monitor. Mean and maximum heart rates were recorded. Simulated per-formance was assessed using validated simulator-based metrics. Student's t-test was used to evaluate the impact of supervision on trainee heart rate, and performance ranking. SETTING: Tertiary trauma center in a Regional Orthope-dic UnitPARTICIPANTS: Orthopedic interns and residents within our institution were invited to participate, with 20 participants included for analysis.RESULTS: Both supervised and unsupervised mean heart rate was significantly higher (p = 0.001) than baseline recorded heart rates. Supervised mean and maximum HR were significantly higher than unsupervised HR dur-ing module completion (p = 0.015; p = 0.001). Calories burned demonstrated correlation to surrogate stress markers, significantly higher in supervised sessions (p = 0.004). Performance metrics demonstrated superior performance in senior-level participants, with a decre-ment in performance during supervision, failing to reach significance. CONCLUSION: The development of accretion of techni-cal and non-technical skills required in surgical training pathways may derive benefit from the use of simulation -based training in surgical residents with both supervised and unsupervised sessions. ( J Surg Ed 79:1379-1386. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association of Program Directors in Surgery. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/))