Pre Meeting Course Submissions

Half Day

1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Participants will learn and practice the FCS skillset: empathic response to avoid the cognitive trap, generate a heads up and headline statement, clarify goals and downsides of surgery using the Better Conversation framework for informed consent, and use scenario planning and Best Case/Worst Case for prognostication and decision making

Participants will demonstrate application of the FCS skillset with high fidelity through exercises, games, and role play with peers

Participants will practice providing constructive feedback during scenario planning and Better Conversations role play

Participants will prepare to launch the FCS curriculum with surgical residents at their institutions

Participants will identify potential pitfalls and respond to common questions when delivering FCS to resident learners

FCS directly addresses three of ASE’s Strategic Plan goals: Goal 1: increase membership, Goal 4: Leadership, and Goal 5: Innovation.

FCS will support Goal 1: Membership, through increasing potential membership of surgical educators and increasing member engagement. We have proven interest in the FCS curriculum across surgery residency programs and in surgical education in general. By providing Train-the-Trainer at ASE and through promoting the workshop through our website and by email, we will support the ASE’s goal to increase membership and engagement, especially among those interested in surgical communication innovations.

FCS will support Goal 4: Leadership through developing leaders in surgical education. The FCS curriculum was developed by a multi-institutional team of surgeons and educators across the country at various career stages. FCS provides a platform to connect with surgeons at all stages and engage them in improving their own and their trainees’ communication skills to benefit patient care. Further since the curriculum is taught to residents and many have testified to the fact that the curriculum material is directly useful in their clinical work, this positive educational experience can encourage residents to prioritize education in their career and become surgical education leaders in their own right.

FCS will support Goal 5: Innovation through augmenting professional and faculty development and promoting programs in novel areas. As previously noted, FCS is a novel curriculum, addressed at an area of surgical education where there is a direct need. Typically, we are limited in how many trainers we can train to provide FCS by the difficulty of scheduling time on busy clinical calendars and by the limited resources of our team. By providing this course in a centralized way, the ASE can train a larger number of attending surgeons and surgical educators than would otherwise be possible. FCS’s participation will also strengthen ASE’s status at the cutting edge of surgical education and communication skills training.

Success will be measured by participant attendance, engagement with activities, including completion of peer role play scoring rubrics, and completion of post course program evaluation survey.

We will consider this course successful if attendance includes at least 20 surgeons, >90% of participants complete peer role play activities and associated scoring rubrics demonstrating use of the FCS skillset with high fidelity, and the post course evaluation survey results show acceptability of course content, timing, teaching methods, and participant confidence in feeling prepared to teach FCS to residents.

There is currently no standardized curriculum for surgical communication for residents despite the need for all surgeons to obtain consent and communicate with patients and families during the course of surgical care. While some researchers have developed ad hoc methods for teaching residents communication skills, they are not standardized.

FCS is well poised to provide a solution through this novel curriculum built by our multi-institutional team using Kern’s six step model for curriculum development. FCS was thoughtfully designed to be scalable and easy to implement in a busy surgical education setting, requiring only 2 hours per resident-learner per year, and supported by materials and pre-recorded didactics from the FCS team. Our curriculum is proven in that >100 resident participants to date have completed one year of FCS with favorable review of the program. Residents appreciate adult learning theory applied in sessions to promote active learning, emphasizing drills over didactics with delivery of real-time feedback. Faculty trainers have provided excellent feedback on our Train-the-Trainer model, helping them learn FCS content and support facilitating FCS for their residents.

Our team was fortunate to receive funding from the CESERT Pyramid Grant to propel this work forward, and Carly Sobol, MD, received the plenary award for our FCS presentation at ASE last May in Seattle.

AV $800
Water, coffee, and packaged snacks $850

No, CME will not be offered.

$100.00

Yes

A 90-minute workshop would be feasible by narrowing the scope of our objectives. We would reduce the didactic component of our proposed course and instead focus on practicing the FCS skillset, including the Better Conversations framework and Acute Change in Status. We would model this off of our highly attended and well-received at the 2025 ASE workshop on 5/9/25.