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The basic skills required for laparoscopic surgery include ambidexterity, hand–eye coordination, instrument targeting accuracy, and recognition of cues to provide a sense of depth [1, 2].

Although these skills are used, and therefore trained, in clinical practice, the surgeon should not rely on caseload for training, for reasons including patient safety and costs. The Institute of Medicine reported in “To Err Is Human” that approximately 100 000 humans die each year as a result of medical errors and that approximately 57% of these deaths are secondary to surgical mistakes [3]. More recent estimates suggest that these figures likely are severely underestimated [4]. The costs for medical errors in human medicine are staggering; up to $29 billion has been estimated [3]. Costs for learning in the OR are likewise steep; the additional costs have been estimated to $100 000 per resident in additional OR time alone [5].

Animal patient safety concerns and costs associated with errors and training time apply to veterinarians as well, albeit we do not have evidence of the exact costs. Veterinary training curricula are also faced with financial limitations, as well as increasing external and internal ethical concerns regarding the use of live animals for surgical training. Using cadavers for surgery training is also fraught with challenges because of problems with availability, storage, and limited usefulness because of decay. Finally, the tolerance for medical errors is declining, and the urgency to reduce errors made by inexperienced surgeons on actual patients has increased, in veterinary and human medicine alike [6]. For these reasons, both human and veterinary educators are being compelled to develop innovative teaching methods for surgical skill instruction.