Slow and Steady: Examining the impact of hands-on instructions on learnability of a training simulator to enhance development of core skills in Central Venous Catheterization

Instructional design is the theory surrounding how learners perceive information and is prevalent in simulation-based medical education. Simulation is used for a variety of medical procedures including central venous catheterization (CVC). The dynamic haptic robotic trainer (DHRT) is a CVC teaching simulator developed to specifically focus on training the needle insertion portion of CVC. While the DHRT has been validated to teach CVC as well as other training methods, an opportunity was seen to redesign the instructions of the DHRT to increase the learnability of the system. A hands-on instructional walkthrough was designed. A group trained with the hands-on instructions was compared to a previous group to assess initial insertion performance. Results indicate that changing the instructional method to be hands-on may have an impact on system learnability and help reinforce development of core components of CVC.