TY - JOUR T1 - The Effect of Bench Model Fidelity on Fluoroscopy-Guided Transforaminal Epidural Injection Training: <em>A Randomized Control Study</em> JF - Regional Anesthesia &amp; Pain Medicine JO - Reg Anesth Pain Med SP - 155 LP - 160 DO - 10.1097/AAP.0b013e318283f5bc VL - 38 IS - 2 AU - Alan Gonzalez-Cota AU - Srinivas Chiravuri AU - R. Brent Stansfield AU - Chad M. Brummett AU - Stanley J. Hamstra Y1 - 2013/03/01 UR - http://rapm.bmj.com/content/38/2/155.abstract N2 - Background and Objectives The purpose of this study was to determine whether high-fidelity simulators provide greater benefit than low-fidelity models in training fluoroscopy-guided transforaminal epidural injection.Methods This educational study was a single-center, prospective, randomized 3-arm pretest-posttest design with a control arm. Eighteen anesthesia and physical medicine and rehabilitation residents were instructed how to perform a fluoroscopy-guided transforaminal epidural injection and assessed by experts on a reusable injectable phantom cadaver. The high- and low-fidelity groups received 30 minutes of supervised hands-on practice according to group assignment, and the control group received 30 minutes of didactic instruction from an expert.Results We found no differences at posttest between the high- and low-fidelity groups on global ratings of performance (P = 0.17) or checklist scores (P = 0.81). Participants who received either form of hands-on training significantly outperformed the control group on both the global rating of performance (control vs low-fidelity, P = 0.0048; control vs high-fidelity, P = 0.0047) and the checklist (control vs low-fidelity, P = 0.0047; control vs high-fidelity, P = 0.0047).Conclusions Training an epidural procedure using a low-fidelity model may be equally effective as training on a high-fidelity model. These results are consistent with previous research on a variety of interventional procedures and further demonstrate the potential impact of simple, low-fidelity training models. ER -