The purpose of the study was to evaluate the objective and subjective experience of medical students completing robotic surgery tasks after limited laparoscopy exposure. Twenty-three medical students without previous laparoscopy and robotic surgery experience self-enrolled into 0 min (n = 11), 20 min (n = 6), and 40 min (n = 6) laparoscopy training groups. Subjects completed rope passing and ball placement tasks on a laparoscopy trainer before repeating similar tasks on the Senhance Surgical System, a robot-assisted digital laparoscopy device. Videos were recorded to evaluate objective measures including time, completion rate, clutch use, out of view instruments, ball drops, and manual adjustments. The NASA-TLX survey was administered to assess subjective experience using workload and task demand measures. There were no statistically significant differences in objective performance between the groups (p > 0.05). Subjects who completed laparoscopy training reported higher workloads, but these differences were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). NASA-TLX workload was correlated with time performance on Pearson and Spearman tests (r = 0.623, rho = 0.681, p < 0.01). Initial experience of medical students with robot-assisted surgery did not differ significantly after limited laparoscopy exposure.
Keywords: Laparoscopy; Performance; Robotic skills; Robotic surgery; Surgical education.