EP405 - Integrating Task-Specific Feedback into Simulation Training Accelerates Skill Acquisition Without Compromising Performance

Sunday, May 10, 2026

1:02 PM - 1:07 PM ET

ePoster Presenter(s)

Bryanna Stukes, MD

General Surgery Resident
UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern
Dallas, TX, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.

Author(s)

Alexis Desir, MD

General Surgery Resident
UT Southwestern
Dallas, TX, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
CT

Christopher Torres, BS

Student
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
RN

Ricardo Elias Nunez Rocha, MD

General Surgery Resident
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
SC

Samy Castillo, MD

Research Fellow
UT Southwestern
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
SG

Sofia Garces Palacios, MD

Research Fellow
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
HZ

Herbert Zeh, MD

Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
JS

Javier Salgado Pogacnik, MD

Faculty
UT Southwestern
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.
PP

Patricio Marcelo Polanco, MD

Faculty
UT Southwestern
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.

Senior Author(s)

GS

Ganesh Sankaranarayanan, PhD

Associate Professor and Co-director of the Center for Assessment of Surgical Proficiency
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Dallas, Texas, United States

Disclosure information not submitted.

Purpose/Background: Surgical simulation improves technical performance but often relies on global assessment tools like the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS), which provide limited guidance for improvement. Task-Specific Metrics (TSM) evaluate discrete procedural steps and may enable more directed learning. We hypothesized that incorporating TSM-based feedback into a traditional OSATS curriculum would accelerate skill acquisition without reducing overall performance.

Methods/Interventions: A retrospective control cohort and a prospective experimental cohort of general surgery trainees were compared. The control group received standard feedback based on OSATS within the existing robotic simulation curriculum, while the experimental group participated in a revised curriculum incorporating TSM-specific feedback in addition to OSATS. All participants performed a standardized robotic gastrojejunostomy using the biotissue model on a DaVinci Xi platform and repeated sessions until achieving a proficiency score of 28 OSATS score. The primary outcome was the number of sessions required to reach proficiency. Secondary outcomes included change in OSATS and TSM scores from baseline to proficiency. Independent t-tests compared mean differences between groups.

Results/Outcomes: Eight trainees completed the study (EXP = 4, CNTRL = 4). The experimental group achieved proficiency in nearly half the number of sessions required by controls (2.25 ± 0.50 vs 4.50 ± 1.29; p = 0.033). OSATS improvement was comparable between groups (6.9 ± 2.3 vs 7.8 ± 3.4; p = 0.69). Although the control group showed a slightly greater increase in TSM scores (6.0 ± 2.5 vs 2.8 ± 2.1; p = 0.09), this difference was not statistically significant.

Conclusion/Discussion: Integrating task-specific feedback into robotic simulation training significantly reduced the number of sessions required to reach technical proficiency without diminishing overall performance. These findings suggest that structured, task-level feedback accelerates skill development and supports incorporation of TSM into surgical simulation curricula to optimize learning efficiency.