Abstract:

Introduction:
The most important principle of pedagogy, including medical, is to correctly assess the knowledge and skills acquisition since they must be restored during the study and retained for use in further professional practice.
Knowledge and skills in time survival are of particular importance in medicine since its determination allows to reveal the necessary time for repeated training and evaluate in general the medical education system efficiency.

Objective:
To develop a scale for predicting basic laparoscopy skills long-term survival in the medical education system.
Materials and methods. The training results and assessment of 48 Odessa National Medical University medical students have been studied with the use of basic laparoscopy skills module of 3-D laparoscopy simulator trained as part of this module at the 5th year, forming a comparative group - CG (for obtaining initial mathematical prediction indicators), repeated it at the 6th year - forming the main group - MG (this group for the knowledge survival calculations and for reaching the main goal). They have passed all the module tasks, at least 10 trainings per module with the number of repetitions from 1 to 4. Time was recorded for the practical skills, security parameters, visual-motor coordination, the selection and release of devices, pedaling, diathermy, aspiration, irrigation, with a video camera viewing angle of 30° and 0°.
The definition of the initial (1st training), intermediate (5th training) and the final (10th training) level of the CG and the MG students practical skills during two years of training, forming 6 groups accordingly, using the self-assessment coefficient (SAC) of the trainee, developed by us on the questionnaires and the practical skills coefficient (PSC) based on the evaluation sheets was determined, summarized and generalized for each group. The Lykert 6-point scale (0-5) of competence levels total assessments were used.
Results: All questionnaires, evaluation sheets, and SACs were specifically developed by us for a specific virtual laparoscopic simulator. SAC was calculated by dividing the total number of points obtained by questioning the maximum possible number of points (50 points). The PSC was calculated by dividing the total number received by the instructor from the exact stage of each student on the maximum possible number of points (70 points). The received SAC and PSC for each student in each of the six stages were summed up with each other and divided into two, obtaining the resultant coefficient of practical skills (RCPS).
The highest rates of practical skills were in the students of the MG final (p <0.05 to both MG initial and intermediate) and CG final (p <0.05 for both CG initial and intermediate), i.e. all students at the end of the 10th training both 1st and 2nd year. The laparoscopy skills long-term survival scale calculation showed a high correlation of indicators in comparable groups. The survival of skills depends on the number of trainings conducted

Conclusions:
1. PSC is of great importance for laparoscopic skills assessment.
2. The SAC effectively process a large array of questionnaires, together with PSC, by obtaining the RCPS - more accurate practical skills evaluation.
3. The survival scale provides an opportunity to assume the long-term ability of the acquired laparoscopic skills with the optimum acquisition at the end of the simulation training of the RCPS not less than 0.65.

Keywords:

Basic laparoscopic skills, medical education, assessment, evaluation, laparoscopic gynecology, laparoscopic surgery, 3-D application, practical skills survival.