Updates from the ACS-AEI Standing Committees

In 2021, the American College of Surgeons-Accredited Education Institutes (ACS-AEI) had a successful Call for Committee Nominations process, infusing our Standing Committees with new members to serve in the primary role of facilitating the value of being in the ACS-AEI program through the creation of products and services. In these fall updates, our volunteer committees outlined their continuous commitment to providing standard-setting value for our members.

The Administration and Management (A&M) Committee has been pressing forward with its agenda since the last committee update. This committee also recently welcomed aboard a new committee member, Elizabeth M. Harris, CCRC, from Anne Arundel/SAIL, during its fall meeting.

A 2021 MORE Track Topics survey went out to AEI core teams to gauge what the consortium thought were the hot topics for this year's MORE Track (the last collection of data was pre-COVID-19). The A&M Committee listened to what AEIs wanted and is currently planning two concurrent sessions in 2022, Different Types of Surgical Curricula and Database Management and Solutions.

The 10th issue of the A&M Committee newsletter was distributed in June. It provided timely information, including annual MORE Track updates, tip and tricks, and DIY models, and it featured committee member Darlene J. Bourgeois EdD, MSN, RN, in the summer Meet the Member column. The fall/winter issue will be released after the holidays.

Committee member Julie A. Hartman, DC, MS, CCRP, and consultant Dawn Swiderski, MSN, RN, CCRN-K, CHSE, FSSH, are developing a comprehensive document to address filming at AEIs, due to the increase in requests by video production companies to use simulation centers for a variety of projects.

Dr. Hartman was also nominated to be this committee's representative for the restructured AEI VGR Program Subcommittee. The A&M Committee is already at work on an idea for an upcoming VGR session.

For more information on Administration and Management Committee activities, please contact Co-Chairs Jeffrey B. Howells, MS, MBA (JHowel1@lsuhsc.edu), and Melinda Klar, RN (mklar@utmck.edu), or Vice-Chair Jesika S. Gavilanes (gavilane@ohsu.edu).

Since its last report, the Curriculum Committee has been finalizing its projects for piloting with invited AEIs this fall. This committee also welcomed aboard four new committee members during the 2021 Call for Committee Nominations:

• Shushmita Ahmed, MD, UC Davis
• Stacy Cooper, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, Baylor Scott & White Health
• Danielle Julian, MS, AdventHealth/Nicholson Center
• John M. Stowers, DO, FACOS, FACS, OHSU

The Curriculum Committee's two priority projects underwent committee review of the finished products over the summer, and staff are finalizing details based on the feedback before piloting this content with predetermined AEIs. One project, Interpersonal and Communication Skills Curriculum: Successfully Engaging Your Patient, Patient's Family, and Colleagues, is being readied for piloting via committee members' AEIs this month for use among their colleagues. If the feedback is positive, the curriculum toolkit will be released to the Consortium in early 2022.

The second project, the Online Curriculum Development Tool (OCDT), had undergone two iterations since the comprehensive version was first developed to create a simulation-based (SB) curriculum development template for the standardization of SB clinical training courses. The template design used in the pilot was an abbreviated version of the original six-step template. The interactive PDF, although not comprehensive enough for a nationally accepted curriculum, will still require the user to follow the steps. This template should assist staff with determining the usage for a more permanent location of this tool.

The Curriculum Committee's 2020 workshop proposal, Bottoms Up! Integrating Inter-Professional Education into a Health Sciences Center, with Faculty Development Committee consultant John T. Paige, MD, FACS; committee member and Faculty Development Committee Co-Chair Nehal Khamis, MD, PhD, MHPE; and Curriculum Committee Co-Chair James N. Lau, MD, MHPE, FACS, was approved and will be refreshed for presentation at the 2022 Annual Surgical Simulation Summit.

For more information on the Curriculum Committee's activities, please contact Co-Chairs Luis E. Llerena, MD, FACS (lllerena@HEALTH.USF.EDU), and James N. Lau, MD, MHPE, FACS (James.Lau@lumc.edu), or Vice-Chair Edgardo S. Salcedo, MD, FACS (esalcedo@ucdavis.edu).

The Faculty Development Committee has been moving forward with new agenda items generated from its June committee call, in addition to meeting its deadlines for the projects currently underway for the Consortium. This committee had a very successful Call for Committee Nominations in 2021 and brought on five new committee members to refresh its roster:

• Marilee McBoyle, MD, FACS, University of Kansas School of Medicine
• Anna Dinchen (Dink) Jardine, MD, FACS, CDR, MC, USN, Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune
• Kevin Y. Pei, MD, MHSEd, FACS, Mirro Center for Research and Innovation
• Victoria Roach, PhD, University of Washington
• Areti Tillou, MD, UCLA School of Medicine

The Faculty Development Committee is organizing a mini retreat during the 2022 Annual Surgical Simulation Summit in March to recharge the committee and update new committee members.

This year, the Faculty Development Committee added a caveat to joining: committee nominees were asked to offer a committee workshop idea for the Annual ACS Surgical Simulation Summit. Dr. Tillou's workshop proposal, Performance Dimension Training for Effective Feedback Based on Direct Observation in Surgical Practice, will be presented at this year's meeting, along with the FUN Workshop Competition, featuring entries from Harvard/Beth Israel Deaconess, Tufts University, and WISE. Dr. Pei's workshop proposal on financial literacy is also under review for a VGR session.

A podcast project to revive the popular Article of the Month (AotM) series will be addressed by this committee in March to determine the appropriate platform for this content.

A third version of the Online Curriculum Development Tool (OCDT) project is being developed by project lead Dr. Khamis. This iteration was shared with the committee by Dr. Khamis during the fall meeting, and it is being tweaked in order to pilot it among the committee members before it is widely distributed to Consortium members. Dr. Khamis is also drafting, in collaboration with Drs. Luis Llerena and James Lau, a booklet that would explain the steps of designing an educationally effective simulation course based on the OCDT's 15 surgical educators' team consensus. The booklet also will provide an appendix with both the full and short versions of the tool.

For more information on the Faculty Development Committee's activities, please contact Co-Chairs Nehal Khamis, MD, PhD, MHPE (nehalkhamis@yahoo.com), and Dmitry Nepomnayshy, MD, MSc, FACS (Dmitry.Nepomnayshy@Lahey.org).

The International Committee has doubled in size due to its successful Call for Committee Nominations in 2021 to address the increasing committee workload. New committee members and consultants include:

Committee Members

• Blagoi Marinov, PhD, MD, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria
• Luca Morelli, MD, FACS, FASCRS, University of Pisa, Italy
• Homero Rivas, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE

2021 Committee Consultants

• Omer Burak Argun, MD, Acibadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, Turkey
• James M. Cooke, MD, FAAFP, University of Michigan, U.S.
• Davide Lomanto, MD, PhD, FAMS(Surg), FRCSEdin(Hon), National University of Singapore
• Asit Misra, MD, MSMEd, CHSE, University of Miami, FL, U.S.
• Yasser Noureldin, MD, MSc, PhD, Benha University, Egypt

The Train the Hybrid Trainer course, developed in collaboration with this committee's leadership, recently held part two of the course, the in-person component, on November 2–5, at the IRCAD AEI in Strasbourg, France. The course has two parts: an online theory section with MCQ, which was conducted in the spring, and the in situ hands-on section, which was held at IRCAD.

Approaching its third year in circulation, the International Committee's latest newsletter was released in September. This publication is designed to provide international AEIs the space to promote centers, research, and courses, as well as submit items of interest for discussion among international colleagues. Highlights from the summer issue include offering readers an opportunity to connect with the international research-minded surgeons over their recent research stemming from the 2018 study on "Video analysis in basic skills training: A way to expand the value and use of BlackBox training?" and providing readers with moulage scenarios from the University of Toronto Surgical Skills Centre and SimSinai Centre at Mount Sinai Hospital.

In response to an AEI Council of Committee Chairs request, this committee conducted a brief COVID-19 survey, which was an extension of the COVID-19 survey conducted by the Program Committee in 2020, with international AEIs to further identify how the pandemic has affected the international simulation community.

For more information on International Committee activities, please contact Chair Lars Enochsson, MD, PhD (lars.enochsson@umu.se ), or Vice-Chair Andrea Moglia, PhD (andrea.moglia@endocas.org).

The Research and Development Committee is advancing projects to develop collaboration among the AEIs.

National Performance Benchmark Project

The objective of the Benchmark project is to develop technical and non-technical skill performance benchmarks for surgery residents. Boris Zevin, MD, PhD, FRCSC, and R. Eric Heidel, PhD, are leading the efforts on this project on behalf of the committee. Currently, there are five AEIs that will be participating in the project. ACS recently received an IRB approval from the American Institute for Research (AIR), and each participating site is now applying for local IRB approval from their institutions. The project sites are expected to recruit participants and begin collecting data in early 2022.

ACS Principles and Practice for Simulation and Surgical Education Research (2014) Update Project

Due to the many technological advances in the methods of education delivery and simulation since the manual was created, the committee is planning to revise ACS Principles and Practice for Simulation and Surgical Education Research. The committee has begun the process of identifying needed updates and new topics for the manual. Recommendations for chapter authors and an editorial board have been provided to Ajit K. Sachdeva, MD, FACS, FRCSC, FSACME, MAMSE, and the project is expected to begin in early 2022.

Analysis of AEI Consortium Data Project

The goal of the project is to review and analyze existing AEI data, assess the current state of simulation training across the consortium, and identify best practices. James Lau, MD, MHPE, FACS, and Philip Pucher, MD, PhD, MRCS, of the Research and Development Committee, along with Ashley Hafer, MD, and LaDonna Kearse, MD, have completed their research and are writing a manuscript based on the work.

Committee Leadership

The committee is led by Mark Aeder, MD, FACS, and Sharon Muret-Wagstaff, PhD, MPA, Co-Chairs, and Ganesh Sankaranarayanan, PhD, Vice-Chair. Dimitrios Stefanidis, MD, PhD, FACS, FASMBS, has fulfilled his fourth term as co-chair of the committee. He and Richard M. Satava, Jr., MD, FACS, will now serve as consultants to the committee.

If you have any questions or would like more information about the Research and Development Committee's membership and activities, please contact the Co-Chairs, Mark Aeder (Mark.Aeder@UHhospitals.org) and Sharon Muret-Wagstaff (smuretwagstaff@gmail.com).

The Technology and Simulation Committee is working to develop standards for simulators and assessment instruments.

Development of Simulation Standards for the ACS/APDS Phase 2 Curriculum

The Technology and Simulation Committee continues to work on the ACS/APDS Phase 2 Curriculum project. The first goal of the project is to establish standards for simulators that may guide manufacturers to develop better simulators that can be used in the ACS/APDS Phase 2 Curriculum training for surgical residents. The second goal is to develop assessment tools that can be used in conjunction with the simulators to objectively measure surgical skill performance. The committee has been creating Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) documents for the skills contained in Module 10: Open Repair of Inguinal and Femoral Hernias and Module 11: Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair.

If you have any questions or would like more information about the Technology and Simulation Committee's membership and activities, please contact the Co-Chairs, David M. Hananel, BS, BA (dhananel@uw.edu), and Gyusung I. Lee, PhD (glee@facs.org).