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

Abstract
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 skills of the 14 trainees were assessed on the 10th repetition of the task, which was performed during normal daytime working hours and again at 9 30 am after a night on call with impaired sleep. The period between the first and 10th repetition on the MIST was predetermined to be no longer than one month.