VR robotic surgery: Randomized blinded study of the dV-Trainer robotic simulator

This research represents a randomized blinded pilot study to evaluate the acceptability and validity of a da Vinci robotic virtual reality simulator platform tested during a pediatric robotic surgery post-graduate course during the annual American Urological Association meeting in June 2007. Course enrollees performed robotic skills tasks on the da Vinci robot and on an offline dV-Trainer and course participant demographic and performance data were analyzed. The majority of learners believed that VR simulation is useful for teaching robotic skills, they believed that the offline trainer can teach robotic skills comparable to a dry lab robotics skills station, and the offline trainer was able to discriminate between experts and novices of robotic surgery, thereby meeting criteria for face, content, and construct validities. This is the first reported acceptability study of a VR robotic surgery simulator as compared to the da Vinci robot system.