Development of laparoscopic skills in Medical students naive to surgical training Desenvolvimento de habilidades laparoscópicas em estudantes de Medicina sem exposição prévia a treinamento cirúrgico

Objective: To assess the acquisition of basic laparoscopic skills of Medical students trained on a surgical simulator. Methods: First- and second-year Medical students participated on a laparoscopic training program on simulators. None of the students had previous classes of surgical technique, exposure to surgical practice nor training prior to the enrollment in to the study. Studentstime were collected before and after the 150-minute training. Skill acquisition was measured comparing time and scores of students and senior instructors of laparoscopic surgery Results: Sixty-eight students participated of the study, with a mean age of 20.4 years, with a predominance of first-year students (62%). All students improved performance in score and time, after training (p<0,001). Score improvement in the exercises ranged from 294.1 to 823%. Univariate and multivariate analyses identified that second-year Medical students have achieved higher performance after training. Conclusions: Medical students who had never been exposed to surgical techniques can acquire basic laparoscopic skills after training in simulators. Second-year undergraduates had better performance than first-year students.