The Role of Virtual Reality in Orthopaedic Surgery Education

Virtual reality has the potential to make a significant impact on medical education at both the medical student and resident level. OssoVR is one of the first companies that has produced functioning software for this niche student group. Medical students gain intimate knowledge regarding the musculoskeletal system helpful for the board exam and a unique insight into procedures they will see during clerkship. This offers them a larger potential to learn when seeing the procedure in the OR, and a view of orthopedic surgery they might not have if they decide to go into other specialties. Testing its efficacy on medical students will help reveal whether or not it may be helpful to have residents use virtual reality rather than reading a step-by-step guide, which is currently the norm for residents after observing the procedure performed by an attending. There is strong agreement in the literature that simulation technology should be a required part of orthopedic residence training (5) and that it improves resident surgical performance. The study was limited to medical students due to the limited number of orthopedic residents at UIC that have not seen an IM tibial nail procedure. Objectives/Aims Aim I. Test the procedural competence of the VR versus the step-by-step guide of IM tibial nail. I will have all of the students go through the procedure on SawBones separately. SawBones are artificial bones used to help train orthopedic students on how to perform a surgery prior to performing the surgery. To ensure blinding, Dr. Gonzalez evaluate their performance as he is a professional in orthopedic surgery and has the appropriate background for proper evaluation of accuracy. He will evaluate their time to complete the procedure, their accuracy in following the steps, and their OSATS score which is used to evaluate surgical technical skills. Aim II. Evaluate how the students who completed the VR simulation felt regarding it. After going through the tibial nail simulation, the students will take a subjective survey regarding how they felt about the experience adapted from a current questionnaire used for virtual environment experiences .