Materials and Methods: A total of 15 residents participated in the studybetween July 2007 and July 2008. The subjects were tested six times atone-month intervals on three skill tasks using the LapSim laparoscopicsimulator. The testing sessions were divided into seminar 1, which wascomprised of the first three sessions, and seminar 2, which was comprisedof the subsequent three sessions. The tasks examined were liftingand grasping, cutting and clip application. The metrics included in thestudy were total time and the following tissue handling parameters: tissuedamage, maximum damage and stretch damage. The subjects were dividedinto junior and senior resident groups. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test forpaired non-parametric data was used to compare the performances of thejuniors and seniors during the first 3 sessions to their performance in thelast three sessions to determine whether there was improvement over time.The Wilcoxon sum test for independent non-parametric data was used tocompare the performance of the juniors to that of the seniors for seminarone, seminar two and the combination of both seminars to determinewhether the more experienced senior residents performed better than theless experienced juniors.Results: No significant performance improvement between testing sessionscould be demonstrated. Similarly, there was no significant difference inperformance between junior and senior residents.Conclusions: Construct validity could not be demonstrated for the total timeand tissue handling parameters of the LapSim laparoscopic surgical simulatorwhen examined within the context of a urology residency program.
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