The program aims to create a paradigm shift in the way surgical training is delivered by giving surgical practitioners access to freely accessible training modules that will allow them to assess their own skills. The current paradigm sees simulation-based training take place in a classroom setting. We want to shift the focus on to self-assessment; allowing surgical practitioners the ability to learn new skills and test their own skills acquisition independently. So along with the development of new training models, modules need a self-assessment frameworks that allow surgical practitioners the ability to test their own skills acquisition outside of a classroom.
Ultimately, we aim to populate an online community platform with surgical training modules. These modules will contain all the know-how needed to create and build the surgical training model, perfothe training and assess skills acquisition. These open-source modules will be validated by both the competing team and through an external validation process, to ensure modules effectively teach outlined skills.
- Self-assessment: Each surgical simulation model will be accompanied by a self-assessment framework, allowing surgical practitioners to test their newly acquired skills.
- Open source: All modules (the model, know-how for build and training materials) will be free to download online from the Global Surgical Training Community platform.
- Low-cost: In resource-constrained settings globally, many surgical practitioners are unable to access low-cost, simulation-based training. Due to a lack of access to cadavers, animal models or simulation-based training, many surgical practitioners undertake procedures for the first time on patients.
Why open-source?[edit | edit source]
Open source is defined as referring to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly available.
The purpose of simulating low-cost open-source modules through this platform is to help surgical practitioners to learn and assess new skills to improve the health of their communities using simulated environments. The Challenge aims to create a paradigm shift in how surgical practitioners learn and assess surgical techniques especially in resource constrained areas.
What is the greater impact?[edit | edit source]
The most comprehensive surgical training programs rely on access to cadavers, live animal training models and expensive simulation-based training. Without access to such training, surgical practitioners in resource-constrained settings often have less hands on experience before they are expected to operate on patients. Through this platform, we want to shift this learning into simulation-based training. We want to focus on self-assessments; allowing surgical practitioners the ability to learn new skills and test their own skills acquisition independently. So along with the development of new training models, competitors in the Challenge will be asked to create self-assessment frameworks that allow surgical practitioners the ability to test their own skills acquisition outside of a classroom.
Who is accessing these modules?[edit | edit source]
Knowing who will access these modules allows us to shape it in a way for them to understand. There are two types of users - content creators and learners. Content creators are surgical organizations like you and learners are the group of people you develop content for.
Content / Module Creators[edit | edit source]
Content / Module Creators are teams, organizations or surgeons that create these learning modules. They are skilled professionals who will provide information, simulations tools & assessment tools for learners to learn these skills through appropedia.
Learners[edit | edit source]
Learners (or the Learning group) are the users of these training modules. These are people who use these training sessions to acquire the skills remotely and use them on patients. There are two types of learners the modules will be focusing on depending on training modules and learner skill set, they are:
- Surgical Learners - If the modules you build are focused on surgical training, then the learners will be surgical learners.
- Prehospital Trauma Learners - Prehospital Trauma Learners will be the learners being trained on prehospital hemorrhage management by the given modules.
Some examples of these learner groups would be medical professionals, on-site volunteers at medical camps, emergency staff, nursing staff, etc.
- Example Surgical Learner specification: Learners could be community surgeons or surgical residents from a specialty that does not include the target surgical procedure in its traditional training such as orthopaedic, general surgery or GYN residents/community surgeons learning a plastics procedure or plastics or general surgery residents/community surgeons learning an orthopaedic procedure.
- Example Prehospital Trauma Learner specification: Learners could be community members or first responders with no previous training or field experience in hemorrhage control.
How are these courses structured?[edit | edit source]
When creating module content, you want to consider some pointers which include not overwhelming the user with too much content and organizing module in a way that it can be easily navigated. A tried and tested way of doing this is Phase-based content approach. The typical phases in which syllabus can be organized could be as follows:
- Phase 1 - Knowledge Review Covers a crash course on topics and concepts needed to simulate the surgical environment
- Phase 2 - Simulation Build Process of replicating the simulation environment using videos, tutorials and detailed guidance
- Phase 3 - Skills Practice Once the learner has the simulations, they need to learn to practice the surgical skills that they would be performing in the real world
- Phase 4 - Self Assessment Before actually performing these skills on humans, we want to allow the learner to gain confidence in their learning by providing them some self assessment tools.
Some of our GSTC teams that have been able to impart knowledge using this approach are:
