ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the anesthesia residents' proficiency in the epidural puncture and training needs using questionnaire survey in China.Methods A questionnaire designed by ourselves was sent to anesthesia residents via the WeChat platform within 1 month.The data were recorded by the system automatically.Results A total of 795 anesthesia residents involved in the investigation,and the number of valid questionnaires was 753 (94.7％).There were 233 (30.9％) junior residents (0-2 yr of training),279 (37.1％) semi-senior residents (3-5 yr of training),and 241 (32.0％) senior residents (＞5yr of training).Compared with junior group,the difficulty score for epidural puncture was significantly decreased,and the confidence scores for performing normal middle lumbar,difficult lumbar,lateral lumbar and thoracic epidural puncture were increased in semi-senior and senior groups (P＜0.05).Compared with semi-senior group,the difficulty score for epidural puncture was significantly decreased,and the confidence scores for performing normal middle lumbar,difficult lumbar,lateral lumbar and thoracic epidural puncture were increased in senior group (P＜0.05).The self-evaluated difficulty of epidural puncture was lower as the number of prior epidural cases was more (r=-0.719,P＜0.01).There were 46.6％ of the residents who had received simulation-based training before performing epidural puncture on the patient,among which most residents considered the simulation-based training is effective in helping to familiarize with procedure (77.2％),familiarize with anatomy (70.4％),simulate the texture of different layers (47.9％),and enhance success rate of epidural puncture (56.7％).There were 75.0％ residents who considered visualization technology is helpful in enhancing the success rate and confidence of epidural puncture.Conclusion Currently,the proficiency of junior anesthesia residents in epidural puncture needs to be strengthened.The simulation-based training has not been widely applied in the epidural training,while residents think high of simulation-based training and are looking forward to visualization technique training.