The Fundamentals of Endoscopic Surgery is a key component to our strategy to prepare surgical residents for practice of basic GI endoscopy. It was developed to provide and evaluate the didactic information required to practice flexible GI Endoscopy and a hands-on component, based on a virtual reality simulator platform, to verify the technical skills required to do endoscopy. Unlike FLS, which is a platform for both training and verification of technical skills in laparoscopy, FES was not designed to provide that hands-on learning platform.
Program directors will need to define the educational program to teach flexible endoscopy that will subsequently be verified using FES testing. This provides both challenges and opportunities to training programs. Most important, it allows PDs the flexibility to prepare their residents based on the resources available to them locally. They may use any combination of clinical experience, virtual reality training, endoscopy on animal part explants, or physical models. There is a pressing need to provide training directors with evidence-based options for training that will prepare their residents to pass FES, i.e. a proficiency-based skills plan.
The proposals will include learning objectives, metrics, proficiency levels and justification for how they were set, criteria for proficiency, and some evaluation of retention after proficiency is achieved. Applicants will describe learning groups, and statistical methods, including sample size calculations, will be required with the proposal.
Both grants will provide up to $15,000.00 for the two grant recipients. SAGES will also provide free vouchers for testing the participants in the study on the final FES VR platform. These vouchers cannot be used for the purpose of certification.