Correlating obstetric epidural anaesthesia performance and psychomotor aptitude.

We investigated the correlation between the scores attained on computerised psychometric tests, measuring psychomotor and information processing aptitudes, and learning obstetric epidural anaesthesia. Ten anaesthetic trainees performed an adaptive tracking task (ADTRACK 3) and one information management task (MAZE) from the MICROPAT testing system. They then embarked on a standardised obstetric anaesthesia training programme prior to performing obstetric on-call duties. The success or failure of their first 50 obstetric epidurals was recorded. There was a significant correlation between mean obstetric epidural failure rate for the second 25 consecutive epidurals and ADTRACK 3 (r = -0.579, p = 0.04) scores. The correlation between the means of the first 25 and 50 consecutive epidurals and ADTRACK 3 scores was not significant. There was no significant correlation between epidural failure rate and MAZE scores. The ratios of the mean epidural failure rate for the last 25 epidurals to the mean for the first 25 epidurals were not significantly correlated with ADTRACK 3 or MAZE scores. Psychomotor abilities appear to be poor determinants of trainees' initial proficiency at obstetric epidural anaesthesia or of trainees' rates of progress during early obstetric epidural training, but may be determinants of an individual's performance after the initial training phase.