Resident Didactics
We have protected education time in the form of an Academic Half Day during the clinical day once per month. On these days, instead of an OR assignment, our senior residents have lectures, case conferences, PBLDs and Simulation Sessions from 7:30-11:30 am, have lunch as a group, and then relieve our juniors from their OR assignments for the afternoon and our junior residents have their academic sessions from 12:30-4:30pm, after which we all come back together for a journal club or PBLD.
In addition to the academic half day 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/review materials from multiple sources.
Grand Rounds occurs every Wednesday morning from 6:30 AM – 7:30 AM. If our grand rounds is given by a visiting scholar, we often have visiting professor lectures on Tuesday afternoons to give residents the opportunity for more personalized interaction with our visiting professors.
The Department of Anesthesiology has a robust Oral Boards curriculum, with many faculty serving as ABA board examiners. We perform formal Mock Oral exams 4 to 5 times per year and hold mock OSCEs in the Spring for CA3s in preparation for the APPLIED exam.
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 training, UW 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 difficult 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. 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.