Session Design Submission Review

Simulation-based training has grown exponentially, resulting in the need for well-trained
simulation educators. Surgical faculty are increasingly called upon to lead, develop,
and/or implement simulation curricula with little additional training in simulation
education theory or educational methodologies. 

Challenges arise around the availability of simulation equipment and centers, the
effectiveness of simulation teaching methodology, and objective demonstrations of
improvement in trainee skills and competencies. Lack of administrative support and/or
research support adds additional obstacles to the successful implementation of
simulation curricula.

The Association for Surgical Education Curriculum in Education Innovation and
Teaching (ASCENT) program was developed by the ASE Simulation Committee,
designed to share the expertise of leaders in surgical education on topics relevant to
simulation to improve knowledge and provide tools to be successful surgical simulation
educators.

This session will provide new and engaging discussions with surgical education
simulation leaders on delivering and evaluating simulation curricula as participants
navigate their own local environment with variable resources, highlighting the newly
established ASCENT program.

Simulation training is a vital part of modern surgical education and its importance in surgical training has been explored in various literature. However, most of these studies are being published from North America. Different countries and regions have their own approaches to incorporate simulation training in surgical education. This session will bring together surgical educators from around the world to give a global perspective on the state of simulation training. It will provide a view of the global landscape, from low-cost DIY setups to advanced training centers with cutting edge technologies, giving a broad overview of how different countries approach surgical simulation. The session will have case studies of countries with basic setups vs. those with cutting-edge technology, and will highlight the diversity in funding, access to resources, and training infrastructure. Each panelist will give an overview of simulation use in their region, success stories and challenges, resource availability, curriculum integration, role of government and private institutions in supporting simulation training. We will summarize the common challenges, give our view on how we can break these geographical and economic barriers and get simulation to trainees around the world.

We will engage the audience with panelists through a live Q&A, addressing specific questions on implementation, challenges, and future directions.

Multi-institutional research collaborations bring together diverse institutions with varying geographic locations, institutional cultures, clinical practices (academic, community hospital based, or hybrid), and research backgrounds. These collaborations play a pivotal role in fostering more inclusive research. Such collaborative research helps overcome limitations of individual institutions, leading to more inclusive, comprehensive, generalizable, and impactful findings. 

Early career researchers and educators often face challenges when it comes to initiating and navigating multi-institutional research and collaborations. Despite the growing recognition of the benefits of such collaborations, these researchers frequently lack the necessary skills and experience to engage effectively in multi-institutional projects. This gap highlights the need for targeted training and support for early career researchers, which is the primary focus of this panel. The ASE’s report on priorities identified several barriers in multi-institutional surgical education research, and this panel aims to address those issues as outlined below.

Outline:

At the beginning of the panel, we will briefly highlight how multi-institutional research inherently promotes diversity by incorporating a wider array of study populations and involving contributors from various geographic locations, institutional cultures, backgrounds, and professional stages. To empower early career researchers to engage in multi-institutional research, the panel will focus on five barriers to conducting multi-institutional research: finding collaborators, funding and resources; institutional review board (IRB) coordination; rigor, institutional cultures, and practice variability; time constraints and communication; and authorship and recognition. We will discuss how ASE can assist in overcoming these challenges and explore how inclusive mentorship can further empower early career researchers and transform the way multi-institutional research is conducted. These barriers are derived from a prior ASE report on priorities in multi-institutional surgical education research. 

The panel will convene experts in these areas, including three faculty members and two CoSEF resident members. We will begin with brief introductions of the panelists, followed by a five-minute overview from each expert on their respective topics. We will provide guiding questions for these introductory remarks specific to each barrier. For example, we will ask the panelist focusing on IRB coordination to address the broad IRB requirements for multi-institutional education research, how requirements differ based on study design or institution, approaches to add outside researchers to a primary institution’s IRB, and when it is necessary for all individual sites to go through IRB review. Following the statements by each panelist, the audience and moderator will ask questions. The moderator will explore specific panelist’s responses and will address issues relevant to multiple panelist’s topics.

Sponsors: 

The Collaboration of Surgical Education Fellows (CoSEF) is a multi-institutional collective of surgical residents focused on education research. CoSEF fosters inclusion through peer mentorship and resident-led research, addressing challenges in surgical education. Since its inception, CoSEF has facilitated multi-institutional research on topics such as virtual interviews, intern year challenges, the match process, gossip in residency, paths to leadership, and implicit bias. CoSEF’s success in inclusive research and multi-institutional projects makes us well-positioned to moderate this panel. Similarly, the Surgical Education Research Committee (SERC) supports multi-institutional research, providing grant support and facilitating collaboration and mentorship.

In a debate, participants actively engage with complex issues, learning by listening to where two ideologies come into conflict and circumstances where each side might be right. True extemporaneous debates rely on creativity and quick decision-making, as debaters analyze and argue various aspects of a topic. Debates encourage analyzing problems from multiple angles, fostering open-mindedness and adaptability. Often the conflict inherent to extemporaneous debating can allow debaters and the audience alike to explore and better understand the conflicting value systems inherent to contentious topics. In short, debating isn’t about winning the argument; it is about encouraging educators to think about controversial topics through a new lens and better understand both sides of an argument. To that end, CoSEF, in collaboration with the Communications Committee, proposes a Great Debate at Surgical Education Week. The debate will focus on a controversial topic within surgical education: the educational utility of pass/fail examinations and clerkship grades for medical students. By providing an opportunity for structured debate, we allow for inclusion and acknowledgement of multiple sides of the issue. These debates will frame the inclusive nature of Surgical Education Week, empowering attendees to keep an open mind on not only the topic debated, but on other topics throughout the meeting.

During this structured debate, which will follow a standardized debate format based on Lincoln-Douglas debate, residents will first provide prepared arguments in the form of opening statements for (Pro Team) and against (Con Team) a debate resolution (e.g., “double scrubbing surgical cases is an effective tool for teaching surgical residents”). These arguments will be crafted prior to the debate with input from attending debate coaches (one per team), selected for their expertise. Each team will then deliver extemporaneous rebuttals, improvised from their literature reviews prior to the debate, directly responding to arguments made in the opening statements. This structured exchange will clarify the core ideological conflict between the Pro and Con arguments, thereby deepening audience understanding of the issue. Between each round of arguments, cross examination will occur to allow each team to clarify their arguments. A moderator (a CoSEF member with experience in debate and panel moderation) will guide the audience through the debate, introducing each segment and keeping each team to strict timing. The debate will conclude with an audience Q&A led by the moderator, during which each team will take questions from the audience.

Often two contrasting ideologies can create entrenched but conflicting beliefs amongst surgical educators. In our experience, ‘debates’ held on controversial topics during national conferences often involve pre-planned presentations for and against the topic, without any substantial back-and-forth arguing of ideas. Our proposed “Great Debate” during Surgical Education Week will help engage educators to explore and gain new insight into the educational utility of pass/fail examinations and clerkship grades for medical students. Through structured rebuttals that foster direct, respectful engagement with opposing arguments, we hope the audience will reconsider previously held views, gain a deeper understanding of all sides of an issue, and make a more informed decision regarding this topic.

Artificial intelligence (AI) methods, including machine learning, hold tremendous promise to advance surgical education, offering new tools to enhance learning, improve skill acquisition, and personalize training for surgical trainees.  However, while the potential of AI in this space is vast, it also brings significant challenges that must be addressed to ensure successful and safe integration.

This panel session will explore the potential and the barriers that AI presents in surgical education. It will also present practical strategies for overcoming these challenges to create a more effective and inclusive learning environment for the next generation of surgeons. The discussion will be focused on the following topics

1. Application of AI in Surgical Education, current landscape : AI is being used in surgical education to augment traditional surgical training through automated performance analysis and feedback. The panel will highlight the potential with examples from undergraduate and graduate medical education.
2. Barriers to Implement AI in Surgical education: While AI holds promise, its integration into surgical education isn’t without hurdles. These include the need for large, high-quality data sets to develop AI models, concerns about the cost and scalability of AI technologies across institutions, gaps in obtaining funding to advance AI research in surgical education. The session will explore how educators can address these issues and make AI solutions more accessible.
3. Recent Advances in AI models including vision, synthetic data to augment training and LLM in surgical education (Innovation): The panel will highlight recent advances in various aspects of AI including GenAI, LLM and vision models as well as use of synthetic data generation for training.
4. Mitigating Bias in Training Data – Safe integration of AI in Surgical Education (Challenges): When developing and implementing AI in surgical education, one must be aware of the bias in data that is used for training. The panel will highlight various sources of bias and discuss strategies in mitigating them.

Targeted Audience:

ASE members with emphasis on

1. Surgical educators looking to incorporate AI into their curricula.
2. Medical students and surgical residents interested in how AI may shape their training.
3. AI researchers and developers working on healthcare applications.

The number of 4th year medical students applying into General Surgery Residency is at an all-time high. Surgery Clerkship Directors, Surgery Clerkship Coordinators, and Program Directors are often tasked with advising 4th year students applying into General Surgery. However, the advice disseminated varies from mentors and institutions across the country. The Clerkship Director Committee seek to present an open panel discussion consisting of Vice Chair of Education, Program Directors, Clerkship Directors, and Clerkship Coordinators to discuss best practices, current statistical trends, what traits/qualities programs desire, what resources are required, and challenging circumstances.  

Challenging circumstances include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Poor academic performance 

• Couples matching 

• The pros and cons of taking a gap year 

• Dual applying into different surgical specialties 

• Not receiving enough interview offers 

• What is the right way to “SIGNAL” 

The target audience are for program directors, clerkship directors, clerkship coordinators, and medical students. We envision the session to be interactive with the audience and to spur a lively informative discussion.

We propose the following format: 

• There will be a moderator to introduce the panelist and the objectives of the panel.  (JUSTIN WAGNER- Vice Chair of Clerkship Director Committee)

• There will be 7 panelists/speakers from the Clerkship Director Committee. We chose our panelists to hopefully represent the diversity of training programs (i.e. Academic, Community, Rural, and Geographical Regions). 

• • Vice Chairs of Education 

• • Program Directors 

• • Clerkship Directors 

• • Clerkship Coordinators 

• Each panelist will present for 5-7 minutes to discuss different subjects based on current verified data and trends (i.e. ACGME, AAMC, LCME, etc.): 

• • Best Practices 

• • Resources Required 

• • Current Applicant Demographics and Statistical Trends 

• • Challenging Hot Topics  

• Moderator will start off the Q&A session with some prepared questions for the panelists.  

• The audience will also be encouraged to participate. 

At the end of the discussion, attendees should be able to gain a better understanding of the current application process and hopefully adopt best tips on how to advise applicants at their own institutions. Furthermore, our committee understand that the current national application process is imperfect and we hope that this will encourage our members to advocate, research, and continue to improve the general surgery application process.

Climate change is already impacting vulnerable populations worldwide and its negative effects on global health are set to become one of the greatest challenges of the 21^st century. The healthcare industry is responsible for 8-10% of carbon emissions in the United States, similar to the 10% contributed by the agriculture industry, and significantly higher than the 5.5% from the military. In order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, every industry will need to significantly decarbonize its activities to achieve a 45% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 – including healthcare. The operating room is particularly energy-intensive and wasteful compared to other areas in the hospital, creating an opportunity for improvement not available to others. As surgeons, we are ethically called to mitigate climate change as key stakeholders in the interventions that will reduce our carbon emissions.

Many of the interventions already being conducted to mitigate surgery’s impact on the climate are a response to advocacy from healthcare workers at an institutional level. However, there will be increasing incentives to integrate these projects more widely from professional bodies, regulators, and the general public. Sustainability has already been included as one of the domains of healthcare quality since the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report “Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century” and a more visible role of climate change in our everyday lives will expand this domain to include environmental sustainability.

As surgical educators, we have the opportunity to include environmental sustainability action as part of the non-procedural skills taught in surgical training. By building on the fundamentals of climate change covered during the 2024 annual meeting workshop: “A Surgeon’s Role in Mitigating Climate Change: Finding Opportunities to Reduce Carbon Emissions in Our Everyday Lives as Surgeons,” the proposed panel will present up-to-date evidence on the main sources of carbon emissions from surgical services and the interventions to mitigate them.  The target panel for this audience will be surgical educators and trainees.

Participants will leave the panel empowered with deeper knowledge of our impact on climate change and the role of surgical educators in training the next generation of environmentally-conscious surgeons.

The American Board of Surgery has mandated use of Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) in the assessment of general surgery residents since July 2023. EPAs compose a competency-based education (CBE) assessment framework that has been increasingly adopted across medical specialties as a workplace-based assessment tool. EPAs focus on directly observed behaviors to determine the level of entrustment a trainee has for a given activity of that specialty. Limited and emerging evidence of EPAs in general surgery has provided initial validity for their use. EPAs represent a current and significant shift in the evaluation of surgical residents as part of the overarching progression toward competency-based education among residency programs.

Nationwide implementation of EPA adoption and use has presented challenges across levels and stakeholders, including program directors, program coordinators, trainees, and front-line faculty. A first step in evaluating use and impact of EPAs on surgical education is to understand the initial implementation and, critically, perceived barriers experienced by stakeholders who have used this tool. Our objective is to investigate and describe the initial implementation and use of EPAs by general surgery programs and suggest tools, resources, and methods for overcoming initial barriers and obstacles.

Broadly, this panel of speakers will share challenges experienced at diverse programs and methods used to overcome them. We enlisted the perspective of various program types, including smaller community and larger academic institutions, as well as an overview of perspectives, including faculty, resident, and coordinator. We expect this session to be beneficial for educational leadership (e.g. Program Directors), general teaching faculty, residents, and program coordinators or managers. Although initially adopted by general surgery, this session should be useful across surgical specialties as this type of CBE continues to expand across surgical specialties.

This session will first provide an initial background on EPA implementation and use in general surgery for a broader audience, including background for adoption, logistics of implementation and use, and initial perceived obstacles. To this end, a survey of faculty and trainees (residents) was created to determine perceived barriers to using the EPAs. Introduction of this topic will also present initial findings from these surveys with suggested barriers and obstacles for discussion.

Critically, this session will also host four representatives who have experience with the implementation and use of EPAs at their program, including a faculty member from a smaller community program, a faculty member from a larger academic program, a resident, and a coordinator.

This collaborative, mixed-methods approach to understanding and exploring the impact of EPAs on surgical education will be of value to many members and attendees of ASE. After this session, attendees will be able to take home strategies to develop infrastructure for EPAs, enhance use of EPAs at their home program, understand barriers to initial implementation and use, and overcome those barriers via resources, tools, and ‘best practices.’

In this 60 minute panel, there will be a brief introduction by moderators from the ACE (Tasha Posid) and GSE (Kshama Jaiswal) committee to introduce the topic and importance, as well as a brief overview results from the ACE/GSE survey on EPA implementation.  This will be followed by 10-minute presentation for each panelist, followed by approximately 15 minutes for Q&A, lead by discussants Jenny Guido, Lisa Cunningham and Emily Huang.

Although the number of female surgical interns is approaching 50%, the lack of family-friendly policies and concerns about the feasibility of balancing the demands of a surgical career and family responsibilities continue to factor significantly into both medical students’ choice of career and the estimated 25% attrition rate of female surgical residents.  Roughly 35% of female surgeons who have completed residency since 2000 have opted to have children during their training (Frangou 2017), forcing program directors to adapt to accommodate more frequent family leave and lactation needs.  According to a 2018 study, a majority of female surgical residents worried about facing negative stigma during pregnancy, particularly if they needed a lighter schedule for their health or the health of their baby (Rangel). A recent survey of US surgical program directors also found that more than 60% believe motherhood adversely affects a trainee’s work and nearly half suggested that the research years are the optimal time for a woman to have a child.

Since July 2021, the American Board of Surgery has allowed greater flexibility for family leave by allowing a minimum of six weeks off once during training for either parental, caregiver, or medical leave without using vacation time or sick leave and without requiring an extension of time in training. Although this change in policy was an improvement, it does not provide adequate support for trainees who either have multiple pregnancies during training or experience complications during their pregnancy(ies).

Trainee concerns about potential pregnancy-related complications are justified. Existing data has shown that female surgeons tend to be older, have fewer children than their male counterparts and work significantly longer hours during pregnancy than the female partners of male surgeons.  Additionally, roughly 25% of female surgeon moms use assisted reproductive technology.  Female surgeons also have higher rates of C-section and pre-eclampsia and are more likely to experience postpartum depression than the female partners of male surgeons (Ranger, 2021).  Data has also shown that rates of obstetrical complications in residents increases markedly with more than 6 call nights per month and/or operating more than 8 hours per week—both extremely common occurrences for clinical surgical residents.

Following childbirth, lactation is an important concern for resident moms.  In a 2018 survey, a majority of female surgical resident mothers felt that having more accessibly lactation facilities would have allowed them to focus more on work and more than half either truncated breastfeeding or avoided it altogether, likely because a similar percentage witness derogatory comments about pumping or breastfeeding at work.  A significant minority felt comfortable asking their attendings to scrub out of a case to pump and many perceived that their attendings would mind if they did so (Rangel, 2018).

To promote a more inclusive workplace, surgical education leaders must continue to innovate to increase support for surgeon moms during and after pregnancy.  This panel will explore some of the current controversies and recommendations about family leave and lactation policies for trainees.

In a debate, participants actively engage with complex issues, learning by listening to how two ideologies come into conflict and circumstances where each side might be right. True extemporaneous debates rely on creativity and quick decision-making, as debaters analyze and argue various aspects of a topic. Debates encourage analyzing problems from multiple angles while fostering open-mindedness and adaptability. Often the conflict inherent to extemporaneous debating can allow debaters and the audience alike to explore and better understand the conflicting value systems inherent to contentious topics. In short, debating is not about winning the argument; it is about encouraging educators to think about controversial topics through a new lens while better understanding both sides of an argument. To that end, CoSEF, in collaboration with the Communications Committee, proposes continuing our tradition of a Great Debate at Surgical Education Week. The debate will focus on a controversial topic within surgical education: virtual versus in-person residency interviews.

During this structured debate, which will follow a standardized format based on Lincoln-Douglas debate, debaters will first provide prepared arguments in the form of opening statements for (Pro Team) and against (Con Team) a debate resolution (e.g., “virtual interviews are more beneficial than in-person interviews for surgical residency recruitment”). Each debate team will be comprised of two surgical trainees. Arguments presented in the opening statement will be crafted prior to the debate with input from attending debate coaches (two per team – Dr. Amanda Cooper, Dr. Michael Ditillo, Dr. Cary Aarons, and Dr. Adnan Alseidi), selected for their expertise and interest in residency recruitment. Each team will then deliver extemporaneous rebuttals, improvised from their literature reviews prior to the debate, directly responding to arguments made in the opening statements. This structured exchange will clarify the core ideologic conflict between the Pro and Con arguments, thereby deepening audience understanding of the issue. Between each round of arguments, cross examination will occur to allow each team to clarify their arguments. A moderator (a CoSEF member with experience in debate and panel moderation) will guide the audience through the debate, introducing each segment and keeping each team to strict timing. The debate will conclude with an audience Q&A led by the moderator, during which each team will take questions from the audience.

Often two contrasting ideologies can create entrenched but conflicting beliefs amongst surgical educators. In our experience, ‘debates’ held on controversial topics during national conferences often involve pre-planned presentations for and against the topic, without any substantial back-and-forth arguing of ideas. This “Great Debate” during Surgical Education Week will help engage educators to explore and gain new insights into whether surgical residency interviews should be virtual or in-person. Through structured rebuttals that foster direct, respectful engagement, we hope the audience will reconsider previously held views, gain a deeper understanding of all sides of this issue, and make a more informed decision regarding this topic.

Simulation-based training has grown exponentially, resulting in the need for well-trained simulation educators. Surgical faculty are increasingly called upon to lead, develop, and/or implement simulation curricula with little additional training in simulation education theory or educational methodologies.

Challenges arise around the availability of simulation equipment and centers, the effectiveness of simulation teaching methodology, and objective demonstrations of improvement in trainee skills and competencies. Lack of administrative support and/or research support adds additional obstacles to the successful implementation of simulation curricula.

The Association for Surgical Education Curriculum in Education Innovation and Teaching (ASCENT) program was developed by the ASE Simulation Committee, designed to share the expertise of leaders in surgical education on topics relevant to simulation to improve knowledge and provide tools to be successful surgical simulation educators.

This session will provide new and engaging discussions with surgical education simulation leaders on delivering and evaluating simulation curricula as participants navigate their own local environment with variable resources, highlighting the newly established ASCENT program.

Moderators: Ming-Li Wang, MD, FACS and Erika Simmerman Mabes, DO, FACS

Target Audience: This panel’s purpose is to inform surgical educators, surgeons, trainees, and researchers about the development and implementation of the ASCENT curriculum and provide tools and resources for successful surgical simulation training.

Loss is an inevitable part of surgical training, yet it is rarely discussed openly. Trainees and faculty are not immune to the very real human experience of personal illness, trauma, or mental health struggles. Programs may also face the profound impact of losing someone suddenly or unexpectedly. These experiences can leave lasting effects on individuals, residency culture, and the broader surgical community.

This panel brings together educators and trainees who have experienced resident loss firsthand, whether through illness, trauma, or mental health challenges, to share their stories. By centering lived experience, the session will illuminate the emotional, professional, and cultural consequences of resident loss, while also highlighting opportunities for programs to respond with compassion, structure, and resilience.

Through storytelling, panelists will explore:

1. The human experience of loss in residency, from multiple perspectives.
2. How individuals and programs navigate grief, uncertainty, and re-entry.
3. Lessons learned about what worked, what was missing, and what could have been done differently.

Audience members will be invited to reflect on their own experiences and identify actionable steps to take back to their institutions. This session is intended for training program leadership, faculty educators, residents, and institutional leaders who want to foster a culture where loss is acknowledged, stigma is reduced, and systems of support are strengthened. Participants will leave with insights into how to approach these difficult moments with empathy and structure, as well as practical tools for supporting both individuals and the residency community during and after loss.

Surgeons and trainees face some of the highest rates of burnout, depression, and suicide across the health professions—yet these struggles often remain unspoken, hidden behind a culture of silence and resilience at all costs. This panel will create a space for open, honest dialogue within the surgical education community by bringing together voices of people in the surgical community with a lived experience with mental health struggles from different perspectives, including personal, peer, leadership, and mental health expert perspectives. Through storytelling, personal reflection, and data-driven insights, the session will illuminate the lived experience of mental health challenges in surgery and the profound consequences of unaddressed distress. By engaging with both the human stories and the structural challenges, this session will empower educators, program leaders, and trainees to return to their institutions prepared to champion a cultural shift—one where mental health is protected with the same urgency as surgical skill and patient outcomes.

Failure to rescue in surgical care is when a complication does not receive timely and appropriate treatment leading to further complications, disability, or even death.  FTR often involves the trifecta of delayed recognition, delayed communication and/or delayed action.  These clinical enterprise concepts are pertinent in surgical education as well.  Unfortunately, trainees and faculty at different stages often struggle in their competencies, as a complication of training.  Similar to clinical failure to rescue, delays in recognition, delayed communication and/or delayed action result in significant, negative downstream effects on career and well-being.  In this panel, we aim to cover struggling learners spanning UME, GME and faculty.

In this panel, panelists use case scenarios to:

1. discuss examples of failure to rescue in surgical education
2. enumerate points of rescue
3. evaluate strategies to rescue
4. draw parallels between clinical enterprise processes and educational failure to rescue.

At the conclusion of the session, attendees will:

1. Be able to recognize a struggling learner/faculty member
2. Have strategies for early intervention and avoid the “failure to rescue”
3. Have tools to address the “failure to rescue” in a more confident and productive manner

Summary Description: Departments of Surgery face unprecedented financial pressure in the current climate while still being asked to deliver excellence in education as well as patient care and research. How do we keep faculty engaged, support surgical training, and protect well-being when “margin is the mission”? This panel will share practical, creative strategies for balancing finances, incentivization, and mission in the current times.

Session Topics:

• Is Margin the Main Mission? The Financial Landscape of Academic Surgery 

Description: Candid overview of the financial pressures currently facing surgical departments: declining reimbursements, increasing administrative costs and faculty time pressures, and competition for limited institutional resources. The speaker will outline how “margin is the mission” (versus “no margin, no mission”) has become a necessary mantra, highlighting both threats and opportunities for surgical training programs.

• Beyond the Paycheck: Creative Faculty Engagement, Especially in Lean Times

With limited funds, financial incentives alone can no longer drive faculty engagement, satisfaction, and/or retention. This speaker will explore alternative strategies for engagement—recognition programs, leadership development, flexible scheduling, promotion, and education alignment—that can keep faculty motivated and invested even when compensation is tight.

• Investing in Education Without Going Broke

Description: Residency and fellowship programs are resource-intensive, yet essential. This speaker will focus on innovative approaches to fund and sustain surgical education, including partnerships, philanthropic support, use of technology, and rethinking educational efficiency. The speaker will also address how to balance fiscal discipline with maintaining a rich training environment.

• Wellness, Burnout, and the Price of Penny-Pinching

When budgets are shrinking, faculty and trainees often feel the strain most acutely. This session will examine the downstream effects of austerity—burnout, disengagement, and attrition—and discuss cost-effective ways to support wellness and resilience in surgical departments. The speaker will propose solutions that strengthen both the faculty experience and the educational mission.

Maximizing the potential of surgical faculty is essential to the success of any academic department of surgery. While faculty are typically considered independent and well-trained upon appointment, continuous, career-long development is necessary to ensure their sustained effectiveness and impact.

Furthermore, surgical faculty often assume critical educational or leadership roles without structured preparation or ongoing support. Just as maintenance of certification ensures the continued development of clinical competencies, there must also be intentional and sustained investment in the education and maintenance of teaching and leadership skills. Supporting the longitudinal growth of faculty as teachers, mentors, program directors, and institutional leaders is vital to promoting excellence in surgical education and ensuring departmental vitality.

Faculty development is a well-established concept in many areas of academic medicine; however, its application within surgery has often been underrecognized and underutilized.

This panel session aims to equip attendees with the knowledge and tools necessary to establish or enhance faculty development programs within their institutions. It will also offer strategic insights into securing the resources and institutional support needed for success.

Expert panelists—including recognized leaders in surgical education and experienced program developers—will explore key aspects of faculty development, including:

1. Defining faculty development and its essential components
2. Identifying the appropriate personnel to lead and manage such programs
3. Outlining the necessary funding and institutional resources
4. Pearls from established surgical faculty development programs

Target Audience:
This session is designed for anyone who has interest in cultivating engaged and high-performing faculty, including surgical educators, trainee, education program administrators, Vice Chairs for Education, and those responsible for faculty development initiatives.

In academia, the well-crafted Letter of Recommendation (LOR) is not merely a formality; it can be a critical determinant of a candidate’s promotion, tenure and funding. Given the import of good LORs, it is imperative for the candidate to advocate for themself effectively. This panel of departmental and MedEd leaders will share their perspectives on best practices and avoidable pitfalls when requesting a LOR.  The expert panel will also share advice for compelling content, highlighting what makes a good letter.  Finally, the learner will be introduced to a new Society member benefit aimed to help juniors increase their professional network, “The Letter Writers Repository.”

Advice will be tiered to the medical student, resident and faculty with a special focus on differentiating requests for promotion versus funding, as in grant applications.  This session will focus on how to truly advocate, both from the vantage of the candidate and from the vantage of the letter writer. It’s about transforming a competent applicant into a truly compelling applicant. The panelists will discuss how the LOR process helps to strategically position a candidate’s experiences to align with the specific values and requirements of target position, professional society or funding request by moving beyond generic praise to powerful, personalized endorsements.

Tools, Skills, and Information Surgical Educators Will Take Back:

Participants will gain a deeper understanding of the critical elements that make an LOR impactful, and what information to provide the letter writer to ensure a tailored letter.

Ultimately, this session aims to empower surgical educators at all levels of career stage and proficiency to advocate for themselves for compelling letters of recommendations that are not just strong, but also strategically powerful. This directly benefits our Society by enhancing our members’ laurels and influence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping surgical education and clinical learning globally—yet implementation, governance, and outcomes vary widely across countries. This interactive panel convenes surgical educators from Brazil, Uganda, Nepal, and Saudi Arabia to surface what’s working now, where risks lie, and how faculty development can equip learners/surgical trainees and supervisors for responsible, high-value AI use.

Panelists will compare national/regional policies and ethical frameworks, highlighting how differing regulatory approaches influence AI use in curricula, assessment, scholarship, and clinical teaching and learning (e.g., documentation training, case preparation, literature appraisal, and research support). Panelists will showcase current educational applications: AI-assisted writing (manuscripts, grants), literature triage and quality checks, assessment and grading support (rubric alignment, formative feedback at scale, integrity safeguards), simulation and skills training with AI-guided feedback, and emerging OR “smart tower” capabilities that augment intraoperative performance. Discussion will explicitly balance opportunities with skepticism and risk management (bias, privacy, academic integrity, “skills atrophy,” and overreliance).

A major focus is faculty development and trainee preparedness: What baseline competencies should be taught in medical school and residency-equivalent programs? Which practical guardrails (syllabi language, policy templates, honor codes) help maintain scholarly integrity while leveraging AI productively? How can programs extend scarce expert feedback with AI-enabled coaching—without replacing human mentorship?

Panelists will also explore global surgery use cases: deploying AI tools to support education and research where resources are constrained, and sharing cross-border playbooks adaptable to local realities. The session includes brief “mini-demos” of practical tools for paper screening and proposal structuring, followed by a short Q&A.

Participants will leave with:

• A concise, country-by-country snapshot of policy and practice,
• A checklist for integrating AI into assessment, simulation, and scholarly work—while preserving core research and clinical reasoning skills.

Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LIC) create an experience where medical students participate in the comprehensive care of patients over time. LIC students simultaneously rotate through all core clerkships throughout the academic year. While the LIC structure shows promise for students pursuing a career in primary care, little is known about the impact of the LIC on surgical education or career determination. Prior studies suggest that the surgical LICs increase medical students’ interest in a surgical career and specifically participating in a rural track LIC can influence surgeons’ decision to pursue a career in surgery. One of the LIC benefits may stem from the strength of student-faculty relationships formed overtime; however, the literature lacks substantive research investigating best ways to support LIC learners specifically in surgical clerkships. Furthermore, there is little known on the influence the LIC plays on the decision to pursue a career in surgery. Our objective is to describe the LIC model as it pertains to surgical education, understand the strengths and limitations of the LIC model within surgery, and to investigate key stakeholders’ perspectives (i.e., surgical educators, clerkship directors, and surgeons) of the LIC’s impact on career decision, residency preparedness, professional identity formation, and mentorship.

This panel is designed to apply to a broad audience of surgical educators. Regardless of an individual’s experience with the LIC model, understanding the curriculum is broadly relevant and valuable, particularly if adopting the model, considering a prospective resident or faculty candidate from an LIC program, or appraising the literature. In this discussion, we will first examine the LIC curriculum model as it applies to surgical clerkships. This will include introducing the longitudinal surgical learning environment and understanding how various academic programs implement the LIC curriculum in surgery. Next, we will evaluate the strengths and limitations of the LIC to surgical learning as it applies to clinical experience, relationship formation, and team immersion. Lastly, we will highlight the perspectives and experiences of surgical educators and LIC graduates from the lens of surgical trainees and faculty.

In this 60-minute panel, the moderators (Kshama Jaiswal, Garbrielle Moore) will start by introducing the topic and panelists. Each panelist will then present for 10-minutes, concluding with a 15-minute Q&A session led by discussants.

Preference signaling was first implemented in the resident recruitment process in the 2021-2022 match as an attempt to provide an objective metric for program directors (PDs) to identify applicants highly interested in their program while decreasing interview hoarding, which had been highly prevalent since the transition to virtual interviews in 2020. In 2024, the Association for Program Directors in Surgery (APDS) increased the number of signals per applicant from 5 to 15. In an attempt to study the impact of this change, the Surgical Education Research Committee (SERC), Graduate Surgical Education Committee (GSEC), and the Collaboration of Surgical Education Fellows (CoSEF) undertook several research projects this past year, funded by the ASE, to investigate PD, medical student advisor, and applicant experiences with and attitudes toward the current preference signaling system. These mixed methods studies involved semi-structured interviews with the aforementioned stakeholder groups, qualitative thematic analysis, followed by a survey of general surgery PDs and applicants based on the themes identified. 

While many commonalities between groups were noted, such as a common understanding of the purpose of preference signaling and a need for greater transparency regarding how programs are using signals, stakeholder opinions diverged in key areas, such as how applicants should be allocating their signals and attitudes toward home or visiting sub-interns signaling their home institution. These results highlight a need for discourse between stakeholder groups with respect to the future of preference signaling. Therefore, we propose a preference signaling panel at ASE this year. Panelists will include program directors, medical school advisors, and general surgery residents from both community and academic programs, as well as a representative from the APDS signaling task force. This panel will start with a summary of the APDS signaling task force and SERC/GSE/CoSEF signaling working group findings, followed by a panel discussion of these results. The panel discussion will be structured around common themes identified in previous preference signaling work, aiming to provide pragmatic guidance on: how general surgery residency applicants should determine their competitiveness and allocate their signals, how general surgery program directors can approach interpreting signals to improve efficiency in application review, how many signals per applicant is the ideal number, how much transparency general surgery programs should provide to applicants regarding how they use signals, whether home and visiting sub-interns should signal their home or visiting institutions, and how the approach to signaling may vary for applicants who are international medical graduates, DO students, couples matching, or dual applying. The discussion will highlight where stakeholder perspectives align or diverge.

This signaling panel represents a unique integration of three major stakeholder vantage points (PDs, applicants, and medical student advisors) and will provide a holistic understanding of preference signaling. Such cross-stakeholder discourse is critical to shaping an inclusive, transparent, and evidence-driven future for surgical recruitment.

As the value of formal training in health professions education has become increasingly recognized, opportunities for early career development have expanded. Within surgical education, there are numerous pathways for residents interested in pursuing opportunities in education leadership, research, and service, though many trainees and their advising faculty may be unaware of these options. The ASE Trainee Committee (TC) and the Collaboration of Surgical Education Fellows (CoSEF) are pleased to present a dynamic panel designed for both trainees and advising faculty that explores the wide range of professional development opportunities available through surgical education fellowships.

This panel will be moderated by the chair of the ASE TC [Sophia Williams-Perez], and panelists will include members of both the TC and CoSEF. Panelists will represent the spectrum of the professional development opportunities available in surgical education, including American College of Surgeons (ACS) Accredited Education Institutes (AEI) fellowship programs [Maya Hunt and Noosha Deravi], non-ACS AEI fellowships [Emma Burke and Cait Silvestri], ASE Surgical Education Research Fellowship (SERF) [Nicole Santucci], and Behind the Knife [Steven Thornton]. The panelists’ experiences encompass pursuing scholarly opportunities at both home and away institutions.

The panel moderator will explore a variety of topics aimed at helping surgical trainees and faculty advisors (e.g., PDs, APDs, etc) become familiar with the available pathways in surgical education training. The session will begin with a moderator-led overview of various surgical education fellowships represented by select panelists. Through host-directed questions, panelists will explore the factors involved in selecting their chosen program, perceived strengths and potential drawbacks, opportunities for curriculum development and scholarship in their respective roles, funding, the availability of formal didactic instruction in health professions education, teaching responsibilities at undergraduate and graduate medical education levels, experiences balancing their roles with additional responsibilities, how participants can learn more about their fellowship if interested, and other topics that arise organically or through question and answer. The session will conclude with summative remarks from the panel. A QR code with summary content will be available.

Panel Presenters:

• Dr. Joon Shim: joon.shim@bassett.org, Bassett Medical Center
• Dr. Cherry Song: Cherry.song2@rwjbh.org, Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center
• Dr. Marcela Ramirez: Marcela.Ramirez@HCAHealthcare.com, HCA Florida Kendall Hospital
• Dr. Ugoeze Nwokedi: ujnwokedi@gmail.com, Parkview Health
• Dr. J. Kayle Lee: Jane-K.Lee@aah.org, Advocate Christ Medical Center
• Dr. Ken Lipshy: wuzupdoc12@msn.com, Hampton VA Medical Center

Panel Agenda:

5 Minutes –  Moderator’s Welcome and Panelist Introductions

• Moderator’s Opening: Welcome the audience and briefly introduce the topic of the panel: the unique challenges and rewards of being a surgical educator outside of a traditional academic setting. Set the stage by highlighting why this conversation is important for both current practitioners and future surgeons.

• Panelist Introductions: Have each panelist introduce themselves. They should briefly state their name, surgical specialty, and the type of private or independent institution they are affiliated with.

25 Minutes – The Core Topics

Panelists will present for 5 minutes each on one of the following. The goal is to get diverse perspectives and practical advice.

Establishing Your Educator Identity –

• Potential Questions to Address: How did you first start teaching in a private or independent setting? Did you have to actively create that role for yourself, or did opportunities arise naturally? What advice do you have for someone trying to get started? How do you handle PTO?

• Is there a difference between Academic, Private practice or Corporate employed teaching surgeon?
• Do you have assigned time for teaching? Do you have any type of compensation from your institutional GME program?
• Liability in private practice?

Balancing Act: Clinical Obligations and Teaching:

• Potential Questions to Address: We all know clinical practice is demanding. How do you find the time to mentor and teach effectively? Can you share a specific strategy or tool you use to balance your surgical schedule with educational responsibilities?

The Benefits of Teaching:

• Potential Questions to Address: Beyond personal satisfaction, what are the tangible benefits of being an educator? How does mentoring trainees positively impact your own clinical practice or your institution?

Advice for Trainees:

• Potential Questions to Address: For the trainees in the audience considering a career in private practice, what’s one piece of advice you’d give them about seeking out educational opportunities? What should they look for in a practice or institution?

20 Minutes –  Q&A with Audience

• Open Floor: The moderator will open the floor for questions from the audience. The moderator should encourage a wide range of questions. The moderator’s role is to ensure all panelists get a chance to answer and to keep the discussion on track.

10 Minutes –  Closing Remarks

• Wrap-up: The moderator will thank the panelists for their time and insights and thank the audience for their engagement. The moderator will ask each panelist to provide one final, concise takeaway message for the audience. This should be a brief, impactful statement summarizing their main point.

Unfortunately, the scope of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) efforts are limited and may overlook some groups that need support. This panel explores the often- unseen experiences of surgeons and surgical residents living with disabilities, whether visible, invisible, acquired, or congenital. Surgery is a field historically associated with physical endurance, speed, and perfectionism. What does it mean to inhabit the identity of both surgeon and disabled in a profession that rarely makes space for that duality?

Panelists will share their stories, challenges, and triumphs. The session will explore how to empower, support, and encourage the next generation of surgeons who identify as disabled. We will interrogate ableism in surgical training, propose solutions for accessibility and inclusion, and inspire attendees to reimagine what a surgeon looks like. It also aims to empower attendees to challenge ableism in surgery.

Residency applications continue to grow more challenging, with fewer objective data points available to evaluate candidates. In response, programs increasingly emphasize holistic review. Within this evolving landscape, the role of the “Chair letter” in surgical applications warrants reexamination.

While many specialties have moved away from Chair letters in favor of evaluations from away rotations and standardized letters—believing these better reflect applicants’ clinical performance—surgery has yet to reach consensus. Simultaneously, the adoption of standardized letters has yielded mixed results, further complicating the evaluation process.

This 60-minute panel will explore the current and future role of the Chair letter in surgical residency applications. Perspectives will be shared by UME clerkship directors and mentors, General Surgery and Surgical Subspecialty Program Directors, and Surgery Chairs. The discussion will contrast traditional Chair letters with emerging non-traditional formats, aiming to clarify their value and limitations.

The final 20 minutes will be dedicated to audience engagement, fostering dialogue and working toward consensus on best practices. Given the topic’s relevance across the UME-to-GME continuum, this session is well-suited for joint interest between ASE and APDS.

Non-technical skills—including communication, leadership, professionalism, and systems-based practice—are critical for safe and effective surgical care. However, they remain challenging to teach, observe, and assess. While surgical education has traditionally emphasized technical skill acquisition, non-technical skills are increasingly recognized as essential for trainee development and patient outcomes. Competency-based frameworks, including the ACGME milestones and Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), offer structured ways to assess learner performance. Nonetheless, mapping abstract constructs like communication or teamwork to these frameworks remains a persistent challenge.

Format:

This panel, led by members of the ASE-ACE Committee, will consist of expert presentations followed by moderated discussion. Panelists will share their experiences, research findings, and best practices related to evaluating and mapping non-technical skills in surgical education. The session aims to foster an interactive dialogue among attendees, encouraging the exchange of ideas and strategies to enhance the assessment of non-technical skills necessary to graduate a competent resident or trainee.

Key Themes and Presentations:

(1) Defining Non-Technical Skills:

• An exploration of the core non-technical skills critical for surgical education, including communication, leadership, professionalism, and systems-based practice.
• Discussion of existing frameworks such as the SCORE curriculum, which teach four key non-technical skills: Situational Awareness, Decision Making, Communication, and Teamwork.

(2) Current Evaluation Practices:

• Examination of existing methods for assessing non-technical skills, including direct observation, simulation, formative tools, and faculty assessments.
• Case studies illustrating the application of these methods in various surgical training programs.

(3) Gaps in Existing Frameworks:

• Identification of non-technical skills that are not represented or under-represented in current EPAs and milestone mapping.
• Discussion of barriers to accurate measurement and strategies to address these gaps.

(4) Innovative Approaches to Assessment:

• Presentation of novel assessment tools and methodologies for capturing abstract skills more effectively.
• Strategies for integrating non-technical skills into competency-based evaluations, with a focus on mapping to ACGME competencies and EPAs.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Define the core non-technical skills essential for surgical education.
• Identify current practices and tools for assessing non-technical skills in surgical trainees.
• Recognize gaps in existing frameworks and propose strategies to address these gaps.
• Implement innovative approaches to assess and map non-technical skills to ACGME competencies and EPAs.

Conclusion:

Through this discussion, attendees will gain insight into both the conceptual and practical challenges of integrating non-technical skills into surgical education. The panel will conclude with a synthesis of actionable strategies for aligning non-technical skill assessment with ACGME competencies and EPAs, emphasizing how programs can measure meaningful outcomes beyond the operating room.

This session will be of interest to a broad range of surgical educators, particularly those involved in resident evaluation and assessment. It will be especially relevant for faculty who serve on Clinical Competency Committees (CCC), Program Directors (PD), Associate Program Directors (APD), and others working within Graduate Medical Education (GME). Senior residents themselves will benefit from this session, as clearer definitions and standardized metrics for non-technical skills can help them understand expectations, enhance their learning, and inform teaching when they supervise more junior trainees.