Presented by: Robert Sweet MD, FACS, MAMSE
University of Washington

Introduction

The role of simulation-based education for training has expanded over the last two decades. "Healthcare Simulation Science" has begun to emerge as a multidisciplinary discipline including an understanding of our clinical discipline and its greater role in the healthcare system, education, engineering and the arts. The inherently diverse nature of this new discipline has stymied the growth of the field through a lack of a unified and shared understanding of related fields' knowledge, skills, nomenclature, and culture. To facilitate the growth of this new discipline, there was a need to develop a formal training program to prepare individuals to lead and develop programs to more effectively disseminate the benefits of simulation worldwide. 

Materials

The first formal surgical simulation training fellowship was created in 2009 at the University of Minnesota. A formal structured curriculum with leadership, administrative, research and education learning objectives were presented to the American College of Surgeons to establish an accreditation process and it was approved in 2012. As of 2023, 20 programs are now accredited by the ACS to provide this type of education around the world. Two programs (UMN and UW) had experience with training several endourologists. Impact metrics were measured through follow-up structured interviews with the former fellows. 

Results

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At the two institutions, between 2009-2023, including a pandemic that significantly impacted training opportunities, twelve fellows have graduated from the program. 6 (50%) are endourologists, 3(25%) are (other) urologists and 3(25%) are from other interventional disciplines who have gone on to leadership positions in various aspects of healthcare simulation science. To date, amongst many other impactful, broader healthcare initiatives, the trained endourologists/urologists collectively provided 19,762 urology learner-hours(l-h) with an additional ~54,000 l-h in other disciplines, developed  28 simulators, contributed to the creation of 43 urology and 105 other curricula, published 49 simulation articles, were responsible for starting 3 international simulation centers, lead/found 5 international training programs and started 3 simulation companies.

Conclusion

Formal simulation science training of endourologists has the potential to make an enormous impact on the development, deployment, and global dissemination of skills through simulation-based education around the world.

Funding

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents funded the program from 2009-2016.

The Pellegrini-Oelschlager endowed fellowship funded the University of Washington program from 2016-present.

Co-Authors

Burak Argun, MD
Acibadem Hospital

Sanket Chauhan, MD, MBA
Baylor Scott and White Health

Domenico Veneziano, MD, PhD
Northwell Health

Zichen Zhao, MD
Peking University Shougang Hospital

Yasser Noureldin, MD, PhD, MSc
Northern Ontario University

Tony Chen, MD
Stanford University

Lauren Poniatowski, MD, MS
University of Washington

Jonathan Wingate, MD
Uniformed Services University

Andrew Rabley, MD
University of Washington