Evaluation of Phantom-Based Education System for Acupuncture Manipulation

BACKGROUND: Although acupuncture manipulation has been regarded as one of the important factors in clinical outcome, it has been difficult to train novice students to become skillful experts due to a lack of adequate educational program and tools. OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we investigated whether newly developed phantom acupoint tools would be useful to practice-naïve acupuncture students for practicing the three different types of acupuncture manipulation to enhance their skills. METHODS: We recruited 12 novice students and had them practice acupuncture manipulations on the phantom acupoint (5% agarose gel). We used the Acusensor 2 and compared their acupuncture manipulation techniques, for which the target criteria were depth and time factors, at acupoint LI11 in the human body before and after 10 training sessions. The outcomes were depth of needle insertion, depth error from target criterion, time of rotating, lifting, and thrusting, time error from target criteria and the time ratio. RESULTS: After 10 training sessions, the students showed significantly improved outcomes in depth of needle, depth error (rotation, reducing lifting/thrusting), thumb-forward time error, thumb-backward time error (rotation), and lifting time (reinforcing lifting/thrusting). CONCLUSIONS: The phantom acupoint tool could be useful in a phantom-based education program for acupuncture-manipulation training for students. For advanced education programs for acupuncture manipulation, we will need to collect additional information, such as patient responses, acupoint-specific anatomical characteristics, delicate tissue-like modeling, haptic and visual feedback, and data from an acupuncture practice simulator.