A review of the American College of Surgeons accredited education institutes' assessment practices for learners, faculty, and continuous program improvement.

Purpose: Simulation is an instructional modality that offers opportunities for assessment across many domains. The American College of Surgeons created the Accredited Education Institutes (AEIs) to build a community of high-quality simulation centers focused around improving surgical education and training. The goals of this project were to identify assessment methods used by AEIs, discuss how these methods align with established assessment frameworks, identify best practices, and provide guidance on best practice implementation. Methods: The authors analyzed responses regarding learner assessment, faculty assessment, and continuous program improvement from AEI accreditations surveys using deductive qualitative analysis. Results: Data from ninety-six centers were reviewed. Codes for each category were organized into formal and informal themes. For learner assessment, examinations and checklists identified as the most common types of formal assessment used and oral feedback as the most common type of informal assessment. For faculty assessment, written evaluations were the most common formal type and debriefs were the most common informal type. For continuous program improvement, written evaluations were the most common formal type and oral feedback was the most frequent informal type. Discussion: The goal of assessment should be to encourage learning through feedback and to ensure the attainment of educational competencies. The data revealed a variety of assessment modalities used to accomplish this goal with AEIs frequently utilizing some of the most reliable forms of assessment. We discuss how these forms of assessment can be integrated with best practices to develop assessment portfolios for learners and faculty, performance improvement reports for faculty, and assessments of clinical impact. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44186-023-00132-6.

Development and Implementation of Urologic Care Army/Air Force/Navy Provider Education, a Urologic Emergency Simulation Curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Military general surgeons commonly perform urologic procedures, yet, there are no required urologic procedural minimums during general surgery residency training. Additionally, urologists are not included in the composition of forward operating surgical units. Urologic Care Army/Air Force/Navy Provider Education was created to provide military general surgeons with training to diagnose and treat frequently encountered urologic emergencies when practicing in environments without a urologist present. STUDY DESIGN: A literature review and needs assessment were conducted to identify diagnoses and procedures to feature in the course. The course included a 1-hour didactic session and then a 2-hour hands-on simulated skills session using small, lightweight, cost-effective simulators. Using a pretest-posttest design, participants completed confidence and knowledge assessments before and after the course. The program was granted educational exemption by the institutional review board. RESULTS: Twenty-seven learners participated. They demonstrated statistically significant improvement on the knowledge assessment (45.4% [SD 0.15] to 83.6% [SD 0.10], P < .01). On the confidence assessment, there were statistically significant (P ≤ .001) improvements for identifying phimosis, paraphimosis, and testicular torsion, as well as identifying indications for suprapubic catheterization, retrograde urethrogram, and cystogram. There were also statistically significant (P < .001) improvements for performing: suprapubic catheterization, dorsal penile block, dorsal slit, scrotal exploration, orchiopexy, orchiectomy, retrograde urethrogram, and cystogram. CONCLUSION: We created the first-ever urologic emergencies simulation curriculum for military general surgeons that has demonstrated efficacy in improving the diagnostic confidence, procedural confidence, and topic knowledge for the urologic emergencies commonly encountered by military general surgeons.

Autosomal Recessive Polycystic Kidney Disease.

The following fictional case is intended as a learning tool within the Pathology Competencies for Medical Education (PCME), a set of national standards for teaching pathology. These are divided into three basic competencies: Disease Mechanisms and Processes, Organ System Pathology, and Diagnostic Medicine and Therapeutic Pathology. For additional information, and a full list of learning objectives for all three competencies, see http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2374289517715040.