Use of Performance Measures to Evaluate, Document Competence and Deterioration of Advanced Surgical Skills Exposure for Trauma (ASSET) Surgical Skills

Abstract : To address the decline in training programs and practice in exposing major vascular structure to control traumatic hemorrhage, the American College of Surgeons introduced a cadaver-based course to review the necessary surgical anatomy, procedure, skills, and techniques for rapid vascular exposure. Preliminary analyses comparing surgical resident performance before and after training, surgeons trained 2-5 years ago, and expert surgeons indicates that the objective assessment tool and Trauma Readiness Index metric distinguish between skill level groups, identify improvement and degradation. Using the objective assessment too l, anatomical knowledge and surface landmarks significantly impacts the correct and successful procedural performance. This mobile task-based assessment tool has high inter-rater reliability and may also be used to evaluate skill remotely.