Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although surgeons perform procedures and tasks under a significant amount of cognitive load, current simulators focus on training psychomotor skills in isolation. This may limit the transfer of learned skills to actual surgical environments. METHODS: Visuohaptic simulations were created that required participants to hone psychomotor skills in the presence of cognitive load. A control group (n = 7) trained on conventional skills simulator and their performance was compared with the experimental group (n = 7) in terms of learning curves and performance on a transfer task. RESULTS: The experimental group performed significantly better than the control group in terms of both learning curves and performance on the transfer task. CONCLUSIONS: Simulations that combine psychomotor and cognitive skills training are more effective than simulators that focus on psychomotor skills in isolation. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.