• Hamilton Chen, Robert Kim, Danielle Perret, Justin Hata, Joseph Rinehart, and Eric Chang.
• Departments of *Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care, Neurosciences and hchen82@gmail.com.
• Pain Med. 2016 Apr 1; 17 (4): 670-4.

ObjectiveTo assess whether a combination of lecture and model simulation improves resident competency and comfort level with needle driving for interventional pain medicine procedures.DesignProspective, observational study.MethodTrainees who rotated through the University of California, Irvine, outpatient pain medicine clinic were recruited for the study. Subjects were given a brief lecture and completed a survey with questions regarding their level of comfort with interventional pain medicine procedures. This was followed by a timed trial on a training simulator where the objective was to drive a needle to the target. After the trial, the subject was then given a 30-minute practice session with the simulation model. The subject was then asked to repeat the timed trial and complete a post-simulation survey.ResultsAll measures of the level of comfort increased significantly after subjects underwent the simulation training. In addition, subjects were able to significantly decrease their entrance time (P= 0.002), total time (P= 0.033), and vertical (P≤ 0.001) and horizontal deviation (P≤ 0.001) from the final target point after the simulation training.ConclusionsOur study demonstrates that simulation training may improve both trainee comfort level and competency with needle driving. After a brief lecture and a 30-minute training session with the simulator, subjective comfort measures and competency measures (more subjects were able to reach the target, vertical and horizontal deviations from the target decreased) were significantly improved. This suggests that simulation may be a helpful tool in teaching needle driving skills.© 2015 American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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