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. 2021 Jan 18;21(1):59.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02424-7.

Effect of motor imagery and actual practice on learning professional medical skills

Christian Collet  1 , Mahmoud El Hajj  1 , Rawad Chaker  2 , Bernard Bui-Xuan  3   4 , Jean-Jacques Lehot  3   4 , Nady Hoyek  5
Affiliations

Effect of motor imagery and actual practice on learning professional medical skills

Christian Collet et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: The peripheral venous catheter is the most frequently used medical device in hospital care to administer intravenous treatment or to take blood samples by introducing a catheter into a vein. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of motor imagery associated with actual training on the learning of peripheral venous catheter insertion into a simulated venous system.

Method: This was a prospective monocentre study in 3rd year medical students. Forty medical students were assigned to the experimental group (n = 20) performing both real practice and motor imagery of peripheral venous catheter insertion or to the control group (n = 20) trained through real practice only. We also recruited a reference group of 20 professional nurses defining the benchmark for a target performance.

Results: The experimental group learned the peripheral venous catheter insertion faster than the control group in the beginning of learning phase (p < 0.001), reaching the expected level after 4 sessions (p = .87) whereas the control group needed 5 sessions to reach the same level (p = .88). Both groups were at the same level at the end of the scheduled training.

Conclusions: Therefore, motor imagery improved professional motor skills learning, and limited the time needed to reach the expected level. Motor imagery may strengthen technical medical skill learning.

Keywords: Motor imagery; Motor learning; Professional medical skills.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Test of MI imagery quality through mental chronometry
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Summary of the experimental design, including the experimental group (exp), the control group (ctrl) and the reference group (ref)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Comparison of the PVC duration according to groups and sessions. The values are expressed by the difference between the mean of the ref group and those of the exp and the ctrl group. Duration decreased in the exp and ctrl groups along the training sessions but the decrease is greater in the exp group who trained both with actual execution and MI. The ellipse highlights on the main data of the experiment: It only takes 4 training sessions to reach the target performance of the ref group while the CTRL group needed 5 sessions to achieve this goal
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Comparaison of actual duration (AD) to MI duration (MI_D) needed to insert a PVC, in the exp. group, during the 4 training sessions (from S2 to S5), the post-test and the retention test
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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