On 4/21/2017 Dr Brian George, representing PLSC, presented some of the major findings of the SIMPL study at the 137th annual meeting of the American Surgical Association. His presentation was met with significant interest from members of this organization that represents the academic leaders of surgery in the United States.

In January 2015, the American Board of Surgery (ABS) agreed to fund a multi-institutional research study to test the SIMPL application as a real-time assessment tool for intraoperative performance of General Surgery residents. PLSC was able to recruit a total of 14 programs across the United States to participate, and the data collection phase of the trial ended in December 2016.

On Thursday, 4/20/2017 Dr Brian George, representing PLSC, shared the main findings of the trial with the ABS Executive committee. The results are thought provoking and suggest that even though our current way of educating general surgeons leads to overall acceptable results, it seems time to rethink some of the fundamentals how this education is currently structured. Members of the ABS were impressed by the large amount of data that were collected and by the sophistication of the data analysis.

This year's surgical education week was held in San Diego, CA from 4/18 - 4/22/2017. The SIMPL app was mentioned in multiple presentations, including the presidential address by Dr Dent. With the increasing interest in proficiency based education and entrustable professional activities real-time assessment of performances will become even more important. Software solutions like SIMPL could play a major role in making this process easy and convenient.

Surgeons in teaching hospitals are challenged with balancing their responsibility to patients for ensuring optimal operative outcomes, and their responsibility to prepare residents for independent practice.  Overseeing quality of care and supervising residents is further complicated by shortened resident duty hours, emphasis on operating room cost efficiency, as well as surgeon clinical productivity. These forces reduce time critical for teaching and honing residents’ operative skills and judgment.¹  As noted in a  monograph published by the Josiah Macy Foundation, the development of essential skills  is delayed if learners are not afforded sufficient independence or authority for patient care.  The monograph reiterates the concerns of program directors and faculty that residents do not receive sufficient opportunity to act independently in the current teaching environment and are less prepared for practice.  These concerns were most strenuously expressed with procedure-based specialties.²