Avaliação online de habilidades no processo de treinamento em anestesia regional em um simulador de realidade virtual

Abstract

Competency-based education has gained prominence in Medical Education by proposing a curriculum that balances the assimilation of theoretical knowledge and the development of practical skills essential for professional practice. In anesthesiology, particularly in the spinal anesthesia technique, clinical competencies predominantly involve psychomotor skills acquired through direct practice. Traditionally, training occurs on patients under the supervision of tutors or experienced residents. However, students often report insecurity when treating patients for the first time. Moreover, the traditional model assesses skills through tutor observation, which can compromise the quality of feedback, especially in large classes. In response to these limitations, new approaches seek to enhance students’ clinical skills and ensure patient safety. In this context, virtual simulators emerge as a viable alternative for training, allowing interactions with a virtual environment that simulates reality. These simulators reduce costs and risks associated with conventional training while offering more opportunities for practice and real-time assessment of students’ skills. This study reinforces the hypothesis that assessing users’ cognitive and psychomotor skills in virtual reality environments is possible. This work proposes a complementary alternative to traditional training that focuses on assessing the acquisition of skills in spinal anesthesia through virtual reality simulation to explore the benefits of virtual simulators. To this end, experts defined the essential components for assessing this technique. Subsequently, the team developed an intelligent assessment model based on a rulebased system that provides relevant and enlightening feedback on user skills using metrics specific to spinal anesthesia techniques. Additionally, developers created a virtual simulator to support training and assessment aimed at training anesthesiology residents. The simulator incorporates tactile interaction resources and allows users to assess their skills after training. The system records the actions performed during training and generates a detailed report on user performance. The evaluation model underwent validation through tests conducted in random scenarios, encompassing all possible types of feedback provided by the simulator in the evaluation report. The simulator was tested for usability aspects using the System Usability Scale questionnaire. The overall average, calculated based on individual scores, reached 78.8 (minimum = 60; maximum = 90; range = 30), classifying the simulator as excellent. Thus, we conclude that evaluating the user’s cognitive and psychomotor skills regarding spinal anesthesia in virtual reality environments is feasible. Furthermore, frequent participation of specialists contributes to detailing information and enhancing the educational approach of virtual simulators for training, consequently improving the quality of the application.