Video-based Collaborative Learning to Improve Ventral Hernia Repair

A repeated measures ANOVA will be used to assess the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS) score between the two baseline and two follow-up measures for surgeons randomly assigned to the Coaching and Constructive Feedback intervention arms, as compared with the wait-list control group. The modified OSATS instrument is a validated rubric that assesses a surgeon's overall technical skill. Skill is measured as both a summary score on a scale from 1 (deficient) to 5 (expert), or as a total score across five subdomains (gentleness, tissue exposure, instrument handling, time and motion, flow of operation). Each domain is rated on the same 1 to 5 point Likert scale, leading to overall scores ranging from 5-25. Scoring will continue until a minimum of 15 scores are obtained for each video.

The approach to the assessment of change in Surgical Site Occurrence (SSO) rates from baseline to follow-up will be assessed similarly to technical skill; however, in this case longitudinal mixed model Poisson regression will be used, with group assignment as the primary explanatory variable. The data will be examined for over dispersion. SSO is a well-defined measure for ventral hernia repair and a composite measure of several outcomes collected through the ACHQC. This includes surgical site infection, seroma, wound dehiscence, and enterocutaneous fistula.

Intervention adherence will be assessed as the proportion of surgeon participants in each of the arms that complete all of the requisite training and sessions. Based on previous experience, an estimate of 75% of surgeons will complete all 3 sessions in the real-time coaching arm, while 50% will complete all 3 cases in the Asynchronous Feedback arm. This is the hypothesis based on challenges in prior studies in coordinating stand-alone activities with surgeons. Prior work suggests all surgeons who volunteer will participate in a minimum of one intervention component.

Another secondary analysis will assess differences in recurrence rates at one and two-years post-intervention, by comparing the Coaching and Constructive Feedback interventions to ACHQC surgeons who are neither surgeons nor coaches in this study. The analysis of long-term follow up is exploratory as a primary analysis would require that we maintain the control group without intervention for 2.5 years to ensure sufficient power, which is not feasible and could adversely impact loss-to- follow-up in the control group.

The perceived value of coaching will be measured at the completion of the intervention by asking coaches and participants to rate on a 1 (low) - 5 (high) scale the perceived value of the intervention in terms of personal performance improvement. Since previous participants have rated the live coaching as highly valuable, we aim to test whether Asynchronous Feedback is perceived to be of significantly lower value than live coaching (non-inferiority, margin of 0.3).

Coaches and surgeons will log any time spent in activities related to the program in a logbook provided by the study team. Reported time will include time in training, preparing for sessions, reviewing videos, and providing feedback (whether as written asynchronous feedback via Asynchronous Feedback or Live Coaching). The total amount of time spent will be calculated in minutes by coaches and participants for each intervention. This will test a hypothesis that Asynchronous Feedback is less time efficient than live coaching (non-inferiority, margin of 0.5).