The influence of reviewer's occupation on the skill assessment of urethrovesical anastomosis in robot-assisted radical prostatectomy.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, crowd-sourced assessments have been reported as a timesaving, cost-efficient, and practicable method of surgical skill evaluation. However, the differences in the assessment of surgical skills by the individual reviewers cannot be further examined in terms of characteristics of the reviewers because they are usually anonymously and randomly selected. This study aimed to reveal the effects of reviewers' occupations on their assessment of a surgeon's skill.

METHODS

In total, 42 urologists, 19 paramedics, 73 medical students, and 28 non-medical personnel used the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skills (GEARS) validated robotic surgery rating tool to assess the surgical skill of surgeons in nine edited video clips of complete urethrovesical anastomosis during a robot-assisted radical prostatectomy. The total GEARS scores of the four groups of reviewers were compared, and the similarities and the differences between the ratings of the urologists group and those of the other three groups were subsequently investigated.

RESULTS

The rankings of video clips in the order of GEARS scores were very similar in each group, and a strong positive correlation (R2 values >0.8) was observed between the scores assigned by the urologists group and those assigned by the other three groups.

CONCLUSION

Our findings indicate that the crude evaluation of robot-assisted urethrovesical anastomosis is not affected by the reviewers' occupations. Non-medical personnel may be able to provide a rudimentary screening evaluation of surgical skill.