Face, Content and Construct Validity of the University of Washington Virtual Reality Transurethral Prostate Resection Trainer

PURPOSE: We examined the face, content and construct validity of version 1.0 of the University of Washington transurethral prostate resection (TURP) trainer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Version 1.0 of a virtual reality based simulator for transurethral skills was developed at our laboratory by integrating TURP hardware with our virtual 3-dimensional anatomy, irrigation control, cutting, bleeding and haptics force feedback. A total of 72 board certified urologists and 19 novices completed a pre-task questionnaire, viewed an introductory training video and performed a pre-compiled 5-minute resection task. The simulator logged operative errors, gm resected, blood loss, irrigant volume, foot pedal use and differential time spent with orientation, cutting or coagulation. Trainees and experts evaluated the simulator on a modified likert scale. The 2-tailed Levene t test was used to compare means between experts and novices. RESULTS: Overall version 1.0 content was between slightly and moderately acceptable. Experts spent less time with orientation (p < 0.0001), resected more total tissue (p < 0.0001), had more gm resected per cut (p = 0.002) and less blood loss per gm resected (p = 0.032), used less irrigant per gm resected (p = 0.02) and performed fewer errors (p < 0.0001) than novices. CONCLUSIONS: We established the face, content and construct validity for version 1.0 of the University of Washington TURP trainer to simulate the skills necessary to perform TURP. A predictive validity study showing a translation of skills from the virtual environment to the operating room will complete the validation of this model.