Is mental training suitable for teaching a surgical procedure to students? A single-center study using a hernia model

'See one' + MST group alone without practical training did not result in comparable performance as the 'See one, do one' approach in our study. The MST group performed inferiorly across most objective metrics. While this suggest that MST in isolation may not be sufficient for teaching complex procedures to medical students, it highlights the importance of practical exposure. The potential benefit of combining MST with hands-on training should be investigated in future studies, but cannot be inferred from the current data.