Correlation of Faculty Assessment Scores with Resident Experience and Preparation at the Surgical Curriculum for Ophthalmology Residents Skills Transfer Lab

Introduction: The Surgical Curriculum for Ophthalmology Residents (SCOR) provides a standardized system of surgical training and assessment. Skills transfer workshops were held on November 2021 and February 2022 and a learning management system (LMS) was made available to all participating residents prior to the workshops. The purpose of this study was to assess for correlation between faculty assessment scores for phacoemulsification chop (“phaco chop”) techniques with the residents’ experience level and pre-workshop preparation time. Methods: Residents who registered for the workshops were asked to self-report the number of cataract surgeries they had performed to date, as well as the number of hours spent practicing on a surgical simulator or in a microsurgery lab. The total minutes spent on nuclear disassembly techniques on the SCOR LMS was also recorded. Faculty assessments for “stop and chop,” “vertical chop,” “horizontal chop,” and “quick chop” techniques for each resident were collected. Results: There was a statistically significant correlation between the number of cataract surgeries performed prior to the workshop and faculty assessment score for the “stop and chop” technique (p= 0.019). There was no correlation between the number of hours spent on surgical simulator or in a microsurgery lab and the faculty assessment scores. There was also no correlation between the number of minutes spent on any the LMS chop training modules and the corresponding faculty assessment score. Conclusions: The residents experience level correlated with their faculty assessment score while other preparatory methods did not, suggesting that surgical volume may be the most effective way to improve phacoemulsification skills.