Testimonials

Program Director Testimonials

Currently more than 1,500 residents are enrolled in The ACS Fundamentals of Surgery Curriculum™ Program directors from a wide variety of programs have provided the following feedback:

“Residents like it. The time commitment is reasonable. Residents perform better overall, understand certain basic concepts better, and are more professional and confident. The only change in our program was the addition of ACS FSC.”
“This curriculum provides exposure to real life situations, preparing residents to think on their feet with ease, handling challenging and common situations after having worked through similar conditions in the ACS FSC.”
“Residents have improved confidence in specific areas of knowledge. The ACS FSC is particularly relevant, useful, and adaptable to the core surgery training paradigm in Canada.”
“The interactive requirement of the ACS FSC requires active participation by the resident, and is easy to document completion of the scenarios.”
“Based on a review of ABSITE questions, the material in the scenarios was relevant.”
“I think that working through the case scenarios contributed to excellent ABSITE scores.”

Resident Testimonials

Comments from residents have included:

“It’s really nice to be chastised by the case scenarios for wasting time doing things that aren’t the most efficient use of your time, since as a medical student, you are rarely told what NOT to order or examine, and are only told when you forget to order something. So the default approach, at least for me, is to order everything I can reasonably think of ordering. Clearly, this isn’t an optimal approach to medicine, as it’s nice to have a program that gives you realistic guidelines as to how to efficiently approach and manage common problems.”
“The ACS FSC is a great simulation and the interface is very involving. A few cases actually had my heart racing as if it was a true emergency! The resource links are priceless.”
“It is very useful and fun!”
“I really enjoy it, and think it’s very useful for day-to-day patient management knowledge, things that are usually left out of textbooks and other resource materials, and things that we usually have to learn on the fly, with no small amount of difficulty and struggle.”

Features for Program Directors

The ACS Fundamentals of Surgery Curriculum has many features designed specifically for program directors. The Instructors’ Manual provides an overview of each scenario including the topic, key learning points, core competencies addressed, answers, references, and images. Some program directors have used the scenarios as the basis for small group discussions and worked through the scenarios with groups of residents, in addition to using the scenarios as individual learning activities. Many programs find practice in the ACS FSC useful in view of duty hour restrictions. The ACS FSC is available on May 1, making it possible for programs to assign the curriculum to incoming residents prior to the start of the academic year.

The system allows program directors to make individual assignments to specific residents and to follow their progress. If desired, customized reports can be generated to show the progress of individual residents, small groups, or all residents, including which scenarios have been completed, which are in progress, which have not been started, and the amount of time spent on each scenario. The reports can be customized by the director or coordinator to meet the needs of the individual residency program. Administrators have access to several guides with user-friendly, step-by-step instructions to easily administer the curriculum.

Revised August 25, 2011