Simulation Curriculum and Didactics

 

Resident Didactics

 

Grand Rounds occurs every Wednesday morning from 7-8AM. We often have visiting professor lectures on Tuesday nights for residents if the Grand Rounds presenter has a topic area they would like to present on. 

 

We have protected education time occurring every Monday afternoon starting at 4PM.  During this time, we have monthly Morbidity and Mortality conferences, monthly Journal Clubs, weekly Case Conference series, and monthly Simulation Sessions.  We model most of our education sessions after our highly rated Case Conference series, where we alternate between anesthesia subspecialties presenting interesting cases that have occurred at our institution and supporting literature on the management of them.  In 2019, we introduced our new monthly simulation curriculum that consists of a pre-simulation lecture, multiple simulation sessions based on PGY year, and a post simulation lecture. 

 

 

In addition to the Monday protected education time, we have CA 1 Basic exam and CA2/3 Advanced exam didactic sessions that are a mixture of in person lectures and podcasts from multiple sources. In 2019, we introduced Keyword sessions on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. These sessions focus on the previous year’s ITE keywords our residents did not perform well on. 

 

The Department of Anesthesiology has a robust Oral Boards curriculum, with many faculty serving as ABA board examiners and one former President of the ABA on staff. We perform formal Mock Oral exams about 4 to 5 times per year.

 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our in-person education sessions have been moved to virtual platforms. This has not stopped any of our education series and has even helped us find ways to improve many of them. All of our Monday protected education time lectures, Keyword Sessions, and Mock Oral board exams are being done virtually. We have continued our Simulation Curriculum, but have had to do this in smaller groups with some residents participating virtually. All of our lectures (Basic and Advanced content outline, Keyword sessions, Simulation lectures) are now being pre-recorded and posted to a secure streaming service for our residents and fellows to access. 

 

 

Resident Simulation Education

 

Simulation education provides a safe learning environment to develop and enhance procedural knowledge and efficiency, teach crisis management, and provide training to deal with difficult patient, patient family, and colleague situations. Throughout their training, University of Wisconsin residents participate in a multitude of simulation activities. During PGY-1 year, interns engage in simulations run by anesthesiology faculty to practice procedural skills, such as central line placement and advanced airway management, as part of their ongoing integrated anesthesiology education. During the clinical anesthesia years, residents participate in simulation sessions every other month to actively train for crisis scenarios and rare anesthesia-related events, such as malignant hyperthermia, anaphylaxis, pulmonary embolus, massive surgical hemorrhage, airway fire, intra-operative ischemia, local anesthetic systemic toxicity, difficult intubation/cannot intubate-cannot ventilate, and out-of-operating room airway management. Residents also get practice in difficult patient scenarios, including relaying bad news, obtaining informed consent, and discussing perioperative Do Not Resuscitate situations. In addition to the formal simulation curriculum, a HeartWorks simulator supplements residents’ hands-on training with transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography. Also, in preparation for the ABA APPLIED examination, residents participate in full-length exemplary anesthesia objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) to ensure excellent preparation for this third exam in the Staged Exam series for board certification.