Surgical Education Solutions: Grant Recipients Announced

The Department of Surgery has awarded five faculty-resident teams with seed funding to address challenges in education. The $5K grants are a continuation of the department’s academic development awards initiative, which launched in 2019 as an internal funding mechanism to accelerate early-stage research.

“This year’s development awards are unique in their focus on education, but the spirit of investing department funds to spark creativity and collaboration is very much the same,” said Department of Surgery Chair, Dr. Nita Ahuja.

The winning projects represent five unique specialties, and address a range of issues, including bi-directional feedback, simulation skills development, and professionalism.

“Last year’s faculty retreat on education initiated thoughtful discussion around many of these topics. We are excited to leverage that momentum and focus on the practical ways we can improve as teachers and learners in our own department,” said Vice Chair of Education, Dr. Mehra Golshan.

Principal Investigators will be invited to present findings from their projects to the department in a future forum.

The winning teams and projects include:

PI: Jay Bader
Co PI: Amit Khanna
AI-technology applications to optimize case-based feedback for surgical learners in Robotic Colorectal Surgery

PIs: Zachary Pickell, Jonathan Cardella
Co PIs: Cassius Chaar, David Strosberg, Britt Tonnessen, Felix Lui and Rudy Durand
Scheduled Observed Medical Student Encounters of Surgical Patients: Improving Feedback and Frequency

PI: David Strosberg
Co PI: Sarah Loh
Building a Supplemental Vascular Surgery Curriculum for General Surgery Residents based on Vascular Surgery Consultation Requests

PI: Rita Milewski
Co PI: Vincent Mase
The REACT (Remediation To Achieve CompeTency) Program

PI: Karthik Prasad
Co PI: Yan Lee, Avanti Verma, Ansley Roche
Advanced Interdisciplinary Airway Management (AIAM) Simulation Training