How to Avoid Common Mistakes in Suture Practice

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Suturing is a skill that can be acquired with practice. Like any other skill, suturing must be practiced under the most realistic conditions in order for its performance to transfer to the actual environment. Otherwise, mistakes can occur, or poor habits can develop, that compromise your skills and ultimately affect the care of your patients.

Common mistakes when suturing

Some common mistakes that students make when learning how to suture include:

• Holding forceps with too tight a grip or too many fingers
• Only holding the needle driver with fingers in the instrument’s loops, and not learning how to hold it with a palm grip
• Loading the needle onto the forceps incorrectly
• Not recognizing which tissue layer you are suturing
• Pulling too tight on the sutures, causing tissue damage

Benefits of SurgiReal Suture Pads

The Suture pads and instruments from SurgiReal were designed to meet a high standard of quality for life-like practice of suturing to develop competent skills and avoid the common mistakes. Some of the high quality features of the SurgiReal suture pads include:

Portability: The SurgiReal suture pads (and suture training kits) are clean, organized, and portable. Thus, students have multiple opportunities to practice suturing practically anywhere - not just in the lab or classroom. The kits are also a great option for teaching in virtual settings. Students can practice on suture pads at home and send videos and images to instructors for feedback.

Reusability: Our suture pads are durable and reusable. Each suture pad is made of high quality silicone, which allows students to repeatedly practice on the same pad without having to work around previously made holes or cuts in the test material. The resiliency of the silicone allows for placement of many more stitches on the same practice surface with repeated use. As a result, the ultimate cost-per-suture is significantly lower, even if the up-front cost seems higher.

Lifelike: Our suture pads provide a more life-like surface for suture practice. Each layer of a suture pad is designed to mimic the real-life layers of tissue (e.g., epidermis, dermis, subcutaneous fat, fascia, etc). This allows students to see and feel the differences between the layers. The high quality suture pad materials also offer the right amount of tension and resistance to hold up to a normal degree of poking and pulling. Suture pads are also available in different skin tones for better appreciation of the different tissue layers. All of these features provide students with the opportunity to practice in a more realistic manner.

Quality Surgical Instruments: At SurgiReal, we are very proud to offer instruments that are as high quality as the suture pads we create. In our all-inclusive suture training kits, the instruments included are top notch. The instruments are full-size and work as well as expected under surgical conditions. There are no mini-instruments with limited range or cheap replicas that break easily or force you to hold them incorrectly. Our kits come with needle drivers that completely close, scalpels that continue to stay sharp after multiple uses, and scissors that are smooth when they open and close.

Quality learning for transferable skill

From the way you hold you forceps and needle driver, to recognizing what tissue layer your are suturing, to the force required to pass a needle through the tissue, to the tension you place on the suture as you close your layer and tie your knots, every step of suturing requires practice on models that simulate lifelike materials. By learning and practicing on replicas of the highest quality, the student is optimally set to acquire the suturing skills that will seamlessly transfer to actual real-life settings.