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Highlights from the 7th Annual PG Course at CAMLS

CAMLS

The 7th Annual American College of Surgeons Accredited Education Institutes (ACS AEI) Postgraduate Course was held September 12–13, 2014, at the USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) in Tampa, FL, where it was sunny and warm. This year’s course theme was entitled, “Metrics-Based Education: Establishing an Educational Framework for Proficiency in Surgical Education.” It is an important emerging framework for those involved in educating learners in surgical education about how they may use it at their accredited education institute.

The keynote speaker was K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, Conradi Eminent Scholar and professor of psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. Dr. Ericsson provided a thought-provoking presentation about how learners acquire expert performance. Dr. Ericsson asked this

question: If surgery was a domain of expertise like chess, music, or sports, how would expert performance be attained? Dr. Ericsson discussed mechanisms and skills and how they are acquired through deliberate practice in each of the noted domains. He then described the concept of automation versus acquisition of complex mental representations. Finally, Dr. Ericsson tied it all together by looking toward the future of surgical education, from opportunities for experience to designed training that uses simulation-based education as one of the methods to help facilitate the acquisition of expert performance.

We asked two accredited education institutes to share their experiences in terms of how they are using evidence-based best practices and expert performance to train their various learner groups. USF CAMLS, represented by Janis Cannon-Bowers, PhD, described how they went about establishing an educational framework for evidence-based practice to train their learners. Lahey Hospital, represented by Dmitry Nepomnayshy, MD, FACS, described that despite the fact that they are a nonuniversity hospital, they have been very successful at developing their faculty and designing curriculum.

Other sessions that were offered to further support the theme of the PG course included how metrics can be used to improve procedural outcomes and how to use metrics to measure team performance.

As is the practice at the annual postgraduate courses, USF CAMLS provided a tour of their facility to showcase

all the various types of simulation-based training and education they provide to their wide range of learner groups. Additionally, USF CAMLS carried their theme of using metrics-based education by providing five unique workshops on how they utilize that framework to design and implement curriculum; how to improve outcomes and lower costs; how to utilize the OSCE to implement milestones; and how metrics can be used in a task analysis, giving formative and summative feedback, and conducting program evaluation. All the workshops were well received by attendees.

Staff would like to thank everyone at USF CAMLS for all their hard work and support of the PG course. We would also like to thank Deborah Sutherland, PhD; Beverly Hughes; and David Smith, MD, FACS, for their leadership, and Jackie Melton for shepherding the program from the beginning.

Mark your calendars for the 8th Annual Postgraduate Course, which will be held at the Education Institute of the Department of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, CA. The dates are November 13–14, 2015. More information will be forthcoming.

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Faculty from the 2014 Tampa Postgraduate Course on Friday afternoon (from left to right): Luis E. Llerena, MD, FACS; Beverly Hughes, BSN, RN; Janis Cannon-Bowers, PhD; Michael Brannick, PhD; John H. Armstrong, MD, FACS; David J. Smith, Jr., MD, FACS; Deborah Sutherland, PhD; Mark Coleman, MB, ChB, MD, FRCS, HonFRCPSG; and Ajit K. Sachdeva, MD, FACS, FRCSCS

Deborah Sutherland, PhD, welcomes attendees to the 7th Annual Postgraduate Course in Tampa, FL

David J. Smith, Jr., MD, FACS - Richard G. Connar, Professor and Chairman, Director, Division of Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery, USF Florida Morsani College of Medicine - moderates a Q&A session on Friday afternoon.”

K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, delivering a well-received Keynote Address on Friday morning of the Postgraduate Course

Michael Brannick, PhD, and Kimberly Smith-Jentsch, PhD, during the Q&A session after their metrics presentations on Friday afternoon

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Thank You, Faculty and Staff!

The ACS AEI Consortium would like to offer our collective thank you to the USF Health Simulation Consortium for being our host for the 2014 Postgraduate Course! We would not have been able to conduct this very successful meeting in Tampa, FL, without our faculty and the considerable help of the USF staff:

Rajesh Aggarwal, MBBS, MA, PhD, FRCS, Arnold and Blema Steinberg Medical Simulation Centre Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QB

John H. Armstrong, MD, FACS, Surgeon General and Secretary of Health, State of Florida

Julie Blatnik, RN, Covidien, Findlay, OH

Michael Brannick, PhD, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

Jennifer Calzada, MA, Tulane Center for Advanced Medical Simulation and Team Training, New Orleans, LA

Nikki Campbell, MSN, RN, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

Janis Cannon-Bowers, PhD, Cubic Advanced Learning Solutions, Orlando, FL

Mark Coleman, MD, FRCS, Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Plymouth, England

Jeffrey B. Cooper, PhD, Center for Medical Simulation, Boston, MA

K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

Mitchell H. Goldman, MD, FACS, UT Graduate School of Medicine, Knoxville, TN

Mark Grichanik, MA, Rush Medical College, Chicago, IL

Stuart Hart, MD, FACOG, FACS, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

Kathleen A. Johnson, EdM, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, IL

Sara Kim, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Luis Llerena, MD, FACS, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

Dmitry Nepomnayshy MD, FACS, Lahey Hospital, Burlington, MA

Olivier Petinaux, MS, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, IL

Robert V. Rege, MD, FACS, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX

Ajit K. Sachdeva, MD, FACS, FRCSC, American College of Surgeons, Chicago, IL

Jaime Sanchez, MD, MSPH, USF Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa, FL

Dawn Schocken, MPH, PhD (c), USF Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa, FL

Lelan F. Sillin III, MD, MS (Ed), FACS, Lahey Center for Professional Development and Simulation, Burlington, MA

David J. Smith, Jr., MD, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

Kimberly Smith-Jentsch, PhD, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

Deborah Sutherland, PhD, USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS), Tampa, FL

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R&D Interest Group Luncheon to Be Held at 2015 Consortium Meeting

Last year during the 2014 Consortium Meeting, the R&D Committee hosted a luncheon on the first day for attendees to have the opportunity to interact with the members of the Consortium. These members were considered experts in the seven categories previously identified through a survey sent out by staff to the entire Consortium in 2013. James Gregory, MD, chaired this group and thought it would interesting to tie each of the presented 12 podium papers to one of the categories and to ask the authors to come to the lunch and engage in meaningful conversation about the category that their paper was tied to. The feedback received about the luncheon was positive, and it was suggested that we offer this type of luncheon again at the 2015 Consortium Meeting.

Philip Pucher, MD, MRCS, has taken over as the chair of this activity and is looking forward to the next iteration of the luncheon. As the committee discussed the success of this activity, it was suggested that the name of the group be changed to Research Interest Groups from Expertise Domain Groups as a way to fully engage members to participate, based on their personal interest, and to add to the conversations about a particular aspect of surgical education simulation research. It was also suggested that the original seven categories identified be reviewed and, if necessary, those that are similar in scope be combined so that there are fewer groups.

Dr. Pucher also shared with the committee the idea that perhaps the R&D Committee could develop quarterly updates on the work or discussions the various Research Interest Groups are having and perhaps record them to make them available as podcasts for others who have an interest in a particular topic. Dr. Pucher would like to use social media as a method to get the Research Interest Groups’ message out to the members of the Consortium.

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ACS AEI Committees recently gave their committee updates and highlights to 2014 PG Course attendees during the lunch break on Friday afternoon at CAMLS this past September.

Administration and Management Committee Update The Administration and Management Committee continues to thrive within the AEI Consortium! We are currently on a membership drive targeting all AEI administrators to encourage their inclusion in our dynamic team. Over the next few months, we will make great efforts to contact AEI administration members and enlighten them with the function, benefits, and mission of the Administration and Management Committee. As a diverse group, this effort should enable our membership to blossom and in turn increase our offerings to the AEI community.

Our meeting in Tampa, FL, on September 11, 2014, was alive with exciting new directions. Review of the Director’s Toolkit, membership drive, Hot Topics, and the 2015 AEI workshop were among the discussions. Our Toolkit project continues to grow and modify. It will now be developed into a static information style book available to the membership online. We are on track to explore the opportunity of a specific administrative track within the AEI meetings. This change will enable us to have focused time to review topics pertinent to our specific needs. Our 2015 Hot Topics roster is looking very exciting with subject matter to include standardized patients, boot camps, checklists, and accreditation updates, so stay tuned and join the discussions.

The 2015 workshop presentation at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Consortium in March is entitled, KiSiS 2: Keep it Simple in Simulation. We are excited to continue our quest of sharing our knowledge and expertise in the use and development of low-cost simulators with other Consortium members in this second iteration of the topic. These low-cost simulation alternatives can be highly effective adjuncts to existing task trainers or fantastic standalone models for you to incorporate into your teaching sessions.

In September 2014, we bid farewell to our long-standing Administration and Management Committee Co-Chair, Troy Reihsen. Troy has been Co-Chair on the Administration and Management Committee for the past five years. It is with great appreciation and gratitude that we take this time to thank Troy for his phenomenal contributions to the committee and look forward to working with him on future projects within the Consortium membership. At this time, we would like to welcome Jennifer Calzada of the Tulane Center for Advanced Medical Simulation and Team Training as our new Vice-Chair. Lisa Satterthwaite from the University of Toronto Surgical Skills Centre at Mount Sinai will remain Co-Chair until October 2015, and Farrah Leland of the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS), University of Washington, moved into the Co-Chair position at the September meeting.

Fall Updates from the AEI Standing Committees

For more information on Administration and Management Committee activities, please contact Co-Chairs Lisa Satterthwaite, RPN, ORT (skills.centre@utoronto.ca), and Farrah F. Leland, JD (batchel@uw.edu), or Vice-Chair Jennifer Calzada, MA (jcalzada@tulane.edu).

Curriculum Committee UpdateThe Curriculum Committee’s manuscript that reported key findings from a needs assessment was recently published in the September issue of the journal Surgery. Curriculum Committee members conducted interviews with 22 national stakeholders to identify best practices for training and areas in need of training. Surgeons’ communication with patients and team members was the most frequently recurring theme as a priority training area.

Building upon this work, the Curriculum Committee, during the September 11 committee meeting in Tampa, FL, discussed a new focus for the Curriculum Committee with Dr. Sachdeva. The committee members were enthusiastic about creating a series of OSCE-like simulation modules to teach residents communication skills using the milestone competencies as a framework. This work will be conducted in partnership with the APDS leadership under the auspices of Dr. Sachdeva. The final modules will be considered the formal product of ACS.

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The 2014 Curriculum Committee workshop, Relieving Tension in the Operating Room, was rated very successful by the participants. The goal of the session was to promote adoption of highly reliable team behaviors in the operating room (OR) to reduce tension and to enhance safety and efficiency in patient care.

The Central Venous Catheter Placement curriculum is now under review by the Curriculum Committee. Andrew S. Wright, MD, FACS, was the lead author of the e-learning modules, which include assessment tools and an accompanying white paper. Following distribution of the final modules, a multi-institute pilot validation study will be conducted through AEIs.

For more information on the Curriculum Committee’s activities, please contact Co-Chairs Brian J. Dunkin, MD, FACS (bjdunkin@tmhs.org), and Daniel J. Scott, MD, FACS (Daniel.Scott@UTSouthwestern.edu), or Vice-Chair Sara Kim, PhD (sarakim@uw.edu).

Research and Development Committee UpdateThe R&D Committee met in person prior to the PG Course that was held at USF CAMLS on September 11, 2014. This committee spent time discussing what should be their focus over the next 18 months in terms of projects and products it should develop that would assist the AEIs. After all suggestions were described, the R&D Committee agreed that the following three proposed projects should be considered for the next year.

1. Attracting Medical Students into Surgery

2. Creating a Re-Entry Program for Surgeons Coming Back into Practice

3. Creating a Consortium COSATs program

As has been described before, the R&D Committee is in the final stages of dotting its Is and crossing its Ts with respect to its manual, ACS Principles and Practice for Simulation and Surgical Education Research. Dr. Aggarwal provided an update as to when the manual would be released. It is hoped that the manual can be sent out to all AEIs, the authors, and the Pre-Conference Workshop attendees by mid-December. The committee asked that the efforts of Dr. Aggarwal, Dr. Korndorffer, and Dr. Cannon-Bowers be noted for shepherding and editing the manual. The Committee also thanked staff, in particular, Amy Johnson and Kathy Johnson, for their continued administrative support of the manual. Once the manual is ready for release, it was suggested that the College consider making it an e-book that is available through the iTunes store.

The R&D Committee began discussing possible topics for its workshop at the 2015 Consortium Meeting. As in the past, the R&D Committee wants to make the workshop interactive and provide the attendees with a take-away. Janis Cannon-Bowers, PhD, will be the chair of the workshop. The description for this workshop, along with the other committees’ workshops, will be available when the registration site opens up.

For more information on the Research and Development Committee’s activities, please contact Co-Chairs Rajesh Aggarwal, MBBS, MA, PhD, FRCS (rajesh.aggarwal@mcgill.ca), and James R. Korndorffer, Jr., MD, MHPE, FACS (korndorffer@tulane.edu), or Vice-Chair Janis A. Cannon-Bowers, PhD (Jancb16@gmail.com).

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Part of the due diligence of maintaining AEI accreditation is submitting an annual report each year for your center. The 2014 AEI Annual Report was e-mailed to AEIs via a Survey Monkey link on December 1, and all 2014 Annual Reports need to be completed by Thursday, January 15, 2015.

Please note: We are currently working with the College’s IT department on two projects. One is to create an online AEI accreditation, which we are very close to completing and hope to launch in 2015. The other project is to put the AEI Annual Report into a searchable database. One of our goals for the annual report data is to link it into an AEI’s individual application, thus eliminating the need for double entry of information from the three-year period of accreditation. We will keep Consortium members posted on the progress of these projects designed to better serve our members’ needs.

If you are experiencing difficulties completing your 2014 Annual Report online, please contact Amy Johnson at ajohnson@facs.org or 312-202-5415.

2014 AEI Annual Reports Due by January 15, 2015

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Make committee membership one of your contributions to the Consortium.

Call for Committee Nominations

We are still in the process of accepting 2015 committee membership nominations for the following AEI committees:

• Administration and Management

• Curriculum

• Research and Development

• Technologies and Simulation

The AEI Leadership is very interested in building up broad representation with AEIs in the Consortium committee structure. Each center brings its unique perspective with regards to the learner groups it serves as well as its training levels, curriculum, and research, which will enhance the committee dialogues now taking place in the AEI Consortium.

If you are interested in becoming a committee member or know of an AEI member who would be a good candidate for committee membership, please send your current CV and a short paragraph stating what you would like to accomplish as a member of that committee to Kathy Johnson, kjohnson@facs.org, or Amy Johnson, ajohnson@facs.org.

Following are the vision and mission statements for these committees for your reference.

Administration and Management Committee

Vision: The Administration and Management Committee of the Consortium of ACS-Accredited Education Institutes will support the credo of the ACS-Accredited Education Institutes by offering guidance, education, support, and knowledge transfer between global members of the assembly to enhance growth and development of management and administration of surgical simulation centers.

Mission: Development and dissemination of operational strategies to the assembly for establishing or established AEI Centers to:

• Discuss best practice values

• Discuss and develop options for fundraising approaches

• Review legal and liability issues

• Discuss human resource guidelines and other business development practices

Curriculum Committee

Vision: The Curriculum Committee facilitates and governs the development, implementation, validation, and dissemination of educational curricula for practicing surgeons and other learners in conjunction with measuring performance and patient-care outcomes. The Curriculum Committee provides consultation, advice, and support to the Consortium of AEIs in implementing validated curricula.

Validation of curricula includes outcomes measures in short- and long-term changes:

• Performance

• Quality

• Safety

• Improved patient care

Mission:

1. Develop and apply needs assessment methods to identify practice gaps in surgical knowledge and skill across specialties.

2. Identify and develop standards for assessing best practices in surgical education.

3. Identify existing curricula and develop new curricula that incorporate best practices.

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4. Identify barriers to curricular implementation and validation (in other words, financial, measurement tools, infrastructure, participant and institution buy-in).

5. Develop models and delivery methods and pathways for widespread curricular implementation (in other words, e-learning, hands-on components, and so on).

6. Develop methods for curricular validation (feasibility, content validity, metrics validation).

7. Develop instruments and methods for objectively measuring short- and long-term changes in performance for competency verification (for example, for credentialing purposes).

8. Develop instruments, methods, and infrastructure for measuring patient-centered outcomes, including short- and long-term outcomes related to quality, safety, and patient care.

9. Work through the ACS Division of Education, to obtain funding (through NSF, AHRQ, ACS, and others) for curricular development, implementation, and validation, including measurement of performance and patient care outcomes.

10. Work through the ACS Division of Education, to dialogue with malpractice and healthcare insurance carriers and relevant industry groups to assist with needs assessment, best practices, and funding opportunities.

11. Work through the ACS Division of Education, to dialogue with the American Board of Surgery to align curriculum and outcome measures with Maintenance of Certification initiatives (Part 2 and Part 4).

Research and Development Committee

Vision: The Research and Development Committee of the Consortium of ACS-accredited Education Institutes facilitates and governs the conceptualization, development, and implementation of multi-institutional research programs across the AEIs.

Mission:

1. To establish an active and meaningful forum for Consortium of AEI Members to develop, catalogue, coordinate, and analyze collaborative research studies.

2. To serve as a core leadership group to develop research concepts and interface with funding agencies and industry around shared research and development interests, evaluation of new technologies, and other opportunities.

3. To help leverage the collaborative power of the Consortium of AEI Members to more rapidly answer research questions relating to the domain of simulation-based surgical education.

4. To enhance communication among Members of the Consortium of AEIs and between the AEI Members and the ACS Division of Education around investigative efforts.

5. To develop, with the input of all AEI Consortium Members, a dynamic global strategy (vision) for the direction of research in simulation-based surgical education.

6. To encourage individual AEI Members to participate in multi-center collaborative research by offering each AEI the opportunity to initiate or participate in at least one multi-institutional research study annually.

7. To facilitate implementation of uniform curricula and outcomes measures and standardization of devices, to support simulation-based surgical education and training.

8. To designate research studies approved by the AEI R&D Committee as ACS AEI Sponsored for grant support, presentations and publications, in order to enhance the credibility and impact of the studies.

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Technologies and Simulation Committee

Vision: The Technologies and Simulation Committee facilitates and governs the conceptualization, development, and implementation of training platforms and simulation standards across the AEIs.

Mission:

1. To establish an active and meaningful forum for Consortium of AEI Members to develop, catalogue, coordinate, and analyze to provide technology for collaborative research studies.

2. To serve as a core leadership group to develop simulation standards and interface with funding agencies and industry around research and development of the standards and share the information with the medical leadership, evaluation of new technologies, and other opportunities.

3. To provide technology for helping the collaborative power of the Consortium of AEI Members to more rapidly answer new trends in training relating to the domain of simulation-based surgical education and tea training in the surgical field.

4. To provide technology for enhancing communication among Members of the Consortium of AEIs and between the AEI Members and the ACS Division of Education around training technologies and simulation standards efforts.

5. To develop, with the input of all AEI Consortium Members, a dynamic global strategy (vision) for the direction training and adoption of technologies in simulation-based surgical education.

6. To encourage individual AEI Members to participate in multi-center collaborative research related to technology and standards development by offering each AEI the opportunity to initiate or participate in at least one multi-institutional research study annually.

7. To facilitate implementation of uniform curricula and outcomes measures and standardization of devices, to support simulation-based surgical education and training.

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Call for Best Practices Videos!

As we previously announced, our Best Practices Committee is building a library of best practices videos in an effort to foster collaboration, promote improved standards in simulation-based education, and, ultimately, enhance patient safety. If you had a best practice identified by the Accreditation Review Committee (ARC) at the time of accreditation/reaccreditation, or if you do something well that you would like to share with the Consortium, then we invite you to submit a brief video and bring this practice to life.

Guidelines for Video Submissions:1. Limit each video to 10 minutes. In fact, five minutes is even better.

2. Each video should start with an intro that states who you are, what center you’re from, and what your best practice is.

3. Avoid making this taxing to you! Feel free to shoot the video using an iPad or iPhone. Editing, if any, can be done with iMovie or Movie Maker. In other words, the videos do not have to be professionally filmed. In fact, we prefer that they are not.

How to Submit Best Practice Videos:1. E-mail Cathy Wojcik at cwojcik@facs.org to state that you will be submitting a video.

2. Shoot your video.

3. Contact Cathy once your video is done; you will receive a media rights agreement to sign as well as a Dropbox link, so you can download your video file.

4. Your video will be reviewed by the Best Practice Committee and then uploaded to the ACS YouTube page, www.youtube.com/user/AmCollegeofSurgeons/videos.

We hope you will participate in this important and exciting new ACS AEI project. Please contact Cathy Wojcik at cwojcik@facs.org with any questions you may have.

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AEI Hot Topics Series Still Resonating with the Consortium

If you are interested in presenting or sharing an idea through the Hot Topics Series platform, please contact Amy Johnson at ajohnson@facs.org or 312-202-5415 with the details.

2015 Hot Topics Line-Up

Look for e-mail invitations after the New Year for the February 2015 session!

To log on and view past sessions, go to the AEI Member Portal site, http://web4.facs.org/aei/home.mvc/index. If you need your credentials to access the site, contact Amy Johnson at ajohnson@facs.org or 312-202-5415.

February 2015

“Standardized Patients”

Sandra Feaster, RN, MS, MBA Stanford University

May 2015

“Checklists”

Pamela Leonard, RN, BSN, MS Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States

August 2015

“Bootcamps”

Bonnie Boucher SimPORTAL/CREST and Lisa Satterthwaite RPN, ORT Mount Sinai Hospital

The popular Hot Topics Series is set for another round of sessions in 2015! This Consortium benefit has broad support from our AEI members. The webinars are well attended and receive great marks from participants.

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8th Annual ACS AEI Consortium Meeting Preview

March 13-14, 2015 Swissôtel, Chicago, IL

Online registration will open on December 15. For the most updated information, please visit our website, www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei/Consortium-meeting.

Highlights of the AgendaThe chair for the 2015 Consortium Meeting is Daniel J. Scott, MD, FACS. The co-chair is James Korndorffer, MD, MPHE, FACS. The co-chairs and the members of the Program Planning Committee have been working to identify new topics and sessions that will provide each attendee with the opportunity to take practical lessons back to their AEI to implement. The Program Committee wants to continue to offer cutting-edge research in the form of having 12 selected abstracts presented to their peers along with the Standing Committees offering hands-on workshops as they have done in the past.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

• The Keynote Address will be given by Lois Margaret Nora, MD, J, MBA, president and CEO of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS). Dr. Nora will address the issue of Certification and High Stakes Exams.

• A special panel will be held to further explore Dr. Nora’s address, “Certification and High Stake Exams: Perspectives from Four Medical Specialty Societies.”

• A presentation by John Potts MD, FACS, chair of the ACGME Surgery Residency Review Committee, will cover the continuous monitoring system being implemented by the ACGME as part of their Next Accreditation System (NAS).

• We are offering a special content track, organized by the Administration and Management Committee, for those AEI administrators who attend the meeting. The session is scheduled to run concurrently to the Friday afternoon Paper Session.

Please contact Cathy Wojcik at cwojcik@facs.org with any questions regarding the 2015 Annual Consortium Meeting.

Mark Your Calendar

The ACS AEI Technology and Simulation Committee would like to invite you to a preworkshop webinar, “Introduction to the Simulator Value Index (SVI) Tool,” scheduled for Wednesday, January 21, at 1:00 pm (CST). In this session, Deborah Rooney, PhD, will introduce you to the SVI tool and demonstrate how to use it in preparation for the upcoming AEI Consortium Technology and Simulation Committee-hosted workshop in March. To RSVP, please contact Olivier Petinaux at opetinaux@facs.org.

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Positive Feedback from the R&D Committee’s Preconference Workshop

Break out session from the R&D Committee’s preconference workshop, Designing Simulation-Based Education Research, on Thursday afternoon

On Thursday, September 11, 2014, the R&D Committee sponsored a preconference workshop on designing simulation-based education research. The reason for the preconference was to offer the next educational opportunity to those individuals who want to improve their skills as to how to design a research study. The workshop was a part of an ongoing series on designing, collecting, and reporting the findings of a simulation-based surgical education research study. The ultimate goal is to give participants the necessary skills and knowledge to complete a research study and to submit a manuscript to a journal for consideration.

This workshop focused on designing a study using a simulation-based education research topic. The participants heard a series of short practical talks on what it takes to design a strong research study. The participants were grouped together and chose a research topic based on four ideas provided. They were asked to create a research design based on the talks given. The faculty served as a “consultant” to each group as they design their study. Each group then presented the design of their research project and received feedback not only from the faculty, but from the other groups. This feedback was given in a collegial manner, with the goal of making the proposed design of the simulation-based education research project a strong study.

The faculty included James Korndorffer, MD, MPHE, FACS, workshop chair; Raj Aggarwal, MBBS, MA, PhD, FRCS; Janis Cannon-Bowers, PhD; Erica Mitchell, MD, FACS; and Robert Turner, PhD.

The workshop included many participants and was well received. (As one of the faculty noted during the session, the workshop must be going well because none of the participants stopped at the scheduled break.) Instead, they continued to work through their design and stayed on topic.

As a result of participating in the workshop, each participant will receive a complimentary copy of the R&D Committee Research Manual once it is published.

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Earn CME credit in 2015 with a course sponsored by an AEI.

A number of AEI-hosted courses covering a range of interests offer CME credit. To see if one of these courses applies to you, please check the AEI Consortium Calendar at www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei/aei-calendar

The AEI calendar posts courses offered by Consortium members for all learner groups, with or without CME credit. If you want to publish an upcoming course or want to get an early start promoting future meetings for your center, please fill out the AEI CME Activity Calendar Submission Form found toward the bottom of this AEI Web page: www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei/resources. We recommend a minimum of four weeks lead time for the promotion of your event on the AEI calendar. If you have any questions, contact Amy Johnson at ajohnson@facs.org or 312-202-5415.

AEI Calendar

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8th Annual ACS AEI Consortium MeetingFriday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14, 2015

Swissôtel, Chicago, IL

www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei/consortium-meeting Online registration opens in December 2014!

8th Annual ACS AEI Postgraduate CourseFriday, November 13 and Saturday, November 14, 2015

Stanford, CA

Hosted by the Education Institute of the Department of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine

www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei/pgcourse

Save the Dates

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CONSORTIUMQ U A R T E R L Y

For more information, contact Amy Johnson, Program Coordinator, at ajohnson@facs.org or 312-202-5415

American College of Surgeons 633 N. Saint Clair St. Chicago, IL 60611-3211

The ACS AEI Newsletter was developed by contributing newsletter editors Amy Johnson; Kathleen A. Johnson, EdM; and Catherine Wojcik. ACS AEI program leadership are Carlos A. Pellegrini, MD, FACS, Co-Chair of the ACS Program for Accreditation of Education Institutes, and Ajit K. Sachdeva, MD, FACS, FRCSC, Co-Chair of the ACS Program for Accreditation of Education Institutes and Director of the ACS Division of Education.

This page and all contents are Copyright © 1996–2014 by the American College of Surgeons, Chicago, IL 60611-3211.

www.facs.org/education/accreditation/aei

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