The Investigation of the Effect of Computer-Based Simulator on the Functional Error of Undergraduate Students of Anesthesia in Patient Preparation for Intubation and Improvement of Laryngoscopy Skill

Endotracheal intubation, as one of the most important methods of airway management, is of great importance and can lead to saving the patient's life. Hence, the training of this skill is highly considered. The present study aimed to design an educational simulator software in this field and to determine its impact on improving the performance of undergraduate students of anesthesia in Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

In this experimental study, 17 undergraduate anesthesia students were selected from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the second semester of 96-97 (2017-18) and randomly divided into control and intervention groups. The control group was evaluated without any intervention, while the intervention group was evaluated after receiving the simulated content and its reviewing several times in the skill lab. The data were collected by a demographic questionnaire and a validated and relied evaluation checklist. The scores of both groups were evaluated using the SPSS-22 software, descriptive statistics (absolute and relative frequency, mean and standard deviation), and t-test, in order to determine the effectiveness of the simulator in improving the performance of anesthesia students in this regard.

The results indicated that the average score of students' performance in patient preparation for intubation was (22.22±10.17) and (36.75±6.78) in the control and intervention groups, respectively, indicating a significant difference (P=0.004). In addition, the average score of students' performance in laryngoscopy skill was (24.09±9.02) and (41.16±12.1) in the control and intervention groups, respectively, which was a significant difference (P=0.008). Finally, the average total score of students' performance in patient preparation for intubation and improvement of laryngoscopy skill was (48.67±20.09) and (78.50±17.78) in the control and intervention groups, respectively, indicating a significant difference (P=0.006).

Based on the results, the use of computer-based simulator could improve students' performance in patient preparation for intubation and improvement of laryngoscopy skill by up to 50%. Therefore, this method can be used as a complementary training method to improve the students’ performance in similar clinical skills in medical sciences.