A Nurse Training Program for Robotic Skills Acquisition and Career Advancement

Abstract

Objective: Robotic surgery presents the state of the art surgical techniques in the era of minimally invasive surgery. A nurse’s role in surgery has been altered with the development of robotics. Our unique program at Polk State College in Florida was a robotic nursing program in which we certified nurses after a great deal of training. In this study our goal was to assess the survey outcomes of this program and to see if there was room for any improvements.

Materials and Methods: We have successfully completed 4 three-day courses. During these courses we trained a total of 30 nurses and technicians. This special three-day course involved learning through online modules, didactic education, hands on training, and live surgery. We asked for their response to various questions about the course through an online survey. The trainees were asked to rank the questions about the program.

Results: We obtained 20 out of 30 responses from our certified trainees. Seventy-five percent of the certified trainees agree that this robotics nursing program has helped them advance in a career. Overall, 85% of the certified trainees stated that this program was beneficial to them, and 95% agree that they would recommend this robotic nursing program to others.

Conclusion: This survey demonstrated a well-designed robotics nurse-training program might help trainees to gain robotic skills. Also, they declared that their certification helped them make some kind of advance in their career.