Augmented Reality Haptic Trainer for Urinary Catheterization

Urinary Catheterization is one of the most widely done medical procedures. Worldwide, an estimated 100 million indwelling catheters are placed. The purpose of urinary catheterization is to create unobstructed access through the urethra into the bladder for drainage of urine. Currently, training of surgeons and nurses for catheter placement is done on low fidelity models and/or on a live patient. This puts the patient at the mercy of the psychomotor skills of the trainee. This situation raises the risk of damage to the patient if a mistake happens by the trainee. To address this training problem, we created an augmented reality haptic feedback system to assist in the training of urinary catheterization. The system consisted of a custom haptic feedback device that mimics catheterization in a real patient. Coupled with the device was a visualization software that allowed for real time control and viewing of the procedure being done with the device. The results showed that the device was capable of outputting accurate force feedback to teach psychomotor skills. Additionally, individual’s using the device overwhelmingly recommended it to augment the current training methods used in urinary catheterization training.