How To Improve The Use Of Surgical Videos For Cataract Surgery Training - A Scottish Perspective

Surgical videos have become a well recognised asset in ophthalmic surgical education and a regular fixture at many international meetings. Supervised review of recorded cases provides an excellent opportunity for in-depth feedback on surgical performance. Additionally, a wealth of easily accessible resources are available online, providing diverse opportunities for further surgical development. A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that pre-surgical video tutorials and self-reflection of recorded cases correlated with improvements in surgical performance (Nguyen 2021). Therefore, we sought to assess the attitudes and access to surgical video recording for ophthalmology trainees in Scotland. 

Multiple training centres across Scotland, UK

We circulated a web-based questionnaire (surveymonkey.com) to all Scottish ophthalmology trainees in each of the four Scottish deaneries (North, West, East and South East). Survey questions established trainees' use of and attitudes towards online surgical video resources, accessibility to video recording facilities within their theatre, and the perceived barriers to recording their own surgical cases.

In total, 27 responses were received from 64 trainees in Scotland (response rate 42%). 78% (21/27) of trainees reported viewing online surgical videos at least monthly, with 26% (7/27) viewing surgical videos daily or several times a week. All respondents found surgical videos to be at least moderately useful, with 41% (11/27) reporting them to be “useful” and 41% (11/27) “very useful”.

The main obstacles to the use of surgical videos were reported to be: concerns regarding clinical governance (56%; 15/27), insufficient time to record cases during theatre (52%; 14/27) cost of equipment (26%;7/27), insufficient time for supervised reflection (22%; 6/27) and resistance from other staff to recordings (19%; 5/27).

Scottish Ophthalmology trainees make regular use of online surgical video resources and find them useful in surgical training. However many lack access or do not utilise personal recording primarily due to clinical governance concerns. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has provided us an opportunity to re-evaluate the delivery of surgical training and the results of subsequent surveys have demonstrated the great value Ophthalmology trainees would place on the use of surgical videos in their training (Ferrera et al., 2020). Therefore, more work needs to be done to ensure access and confidence using personal surgical video to improve surgical training in Scotland.