Laparoscopic performance after one night on call in a surgical department: prospective study

The study was carried out in a gastroenterological surgical unit at a teaching hospital. A night shift started at 3 30 pm and finished at 9 am the following day. A total sleep time of less than three hours was necessary for inclusion in the study. All 14 surgeons in training at our department— 11 men and three women—participated in the study. The median age was 34 (range 24-43) and the median time since graduation was six years (1-11 years). All trainees had similar, limited experience in laparoscopic surgery; the median number of cholecystectomies they had performed was 0 (0–5). All participants received identical pretraining on the minimally invasive surgical trainer-virtual reality (MIST-VR, Mentice Medical Simulation, Gothenburg, Sweden) by performing nine repetitions of six tasks. 1 2 The laparoscopic surgical …