The Use of Different Technological Methods for Teaching Basic Suturing Skills to Medical Students: A Literature Review

Abstract

Suturing skills are usually acquired by medical students through observation and then practice. There is a pressing need to develop more efficient teaching methods as students are often unprepared to perform suturing in clinical practice. This study therefore aims to investigate the benefits and limitations of different technological teaching methods and determine if technological methods are superior to conventional teaching. The search was conducted using ScienceDirect, PubMed and Scopus with different combinations of the key terms “suturing”, “suture”, “knot-tying”, “suturing skill”, “surgical skill”, “teaching methods” and “medical students”. Overall, 19 relevant articles were shortlisted, discussing the use of virtual reality, augmented reality, videos and programmes in teaching suturing skills. The use of instructional videos is a good alternative to the traditional lab-based method while video self-reflection was found to be an effective enhancement. Integration of these methods could be a valuable addition to the current curriculum.