Education Committee Update

As the new year approaches, the education committee would like to announce some new and exciting changes to the structure of the education committee, as well as our offerings for 2024.  As you will read in this month’s Interchange, the SOCCA component of the 2024 Annual Meeting in Seattle will be undergoing significant changes. We are excited that we will now be able to incorporate three days’ worth of educational offerings as a part of the combined IARS/SOCCA meeting. With this change likely to last beyond 2024, the Annual Meeting subcommittee will be continuing our work on grading and developing annual meeting content for years to come.

The board review course has had another successful year. The Board Review subcommittee under the leadership of Dr. Brian Wessman and Dr. Talia Ben-Jacob put on a two-session review course in late September and early October. The SOCCA board review course provides a high-impact review to help our recently graduated fellows study for the critical care boards in mid-November. Over one hundred examinees registered for the course, which covered topics ranging from complex ventilator management strategies, arterial blood gas analysis to nutritional goals in the ICU. The course is taught by junior faculty members who have recent experience with preparing and taking their board exams.

The education committee provided high-quality educational webinars last year and plans to continue doing so for 2024. Thank you to the Webinar subcommittee and its Chair, Dr. Ranjit Deshpande, and Vice Chair, Dr. Jason Brainard for developing a fantastic schedule of webinars for 2023 and early 2024. We are grateful for the expertise within SOCCA membership and appreciate all the speakers and moderators who presented on varied topics, ranging from liver transplantation, increasing diversity in critical care, kickstarting a research career, the development of critical care as the result of the polio epidemic, and the emerging role of critical care anesthesiologists. The new year will begin with webinars co-sponsored by other SOCCA committees, sub-committees, sections, and working groups, including Women in Critical Care and Early Career Intensivists.

In 2024, the Education Committee plans to launch some new education initiatives and create corresponding subcommittees. First, we have an opportunity to partner with Anesthesia Toolbox to curate critical care education and curricular content for trainees. Anesthesia Toolbox was first started at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) as a collaborative for resident educational content and was recently acquired by ASA. Currently, there is a gap in the educational content related to critical care, which will provide an opportunity for SOCCA members to create high-impact content for anesthesiology residents. Secondly, the education committee has identified a lack of exam preparatory materials specific to the ABA’s critical care exam. In 2024, we will be creating a bank of questions, which will be the first (and only) specific question bank resource for the ABA exam.  Thirdly, we are in the process of creating virtual journal club sessions, where the SOCCA membership can discuss high-impact research in critical care. This will be a great opportunity for our fellows and junior faculty to present important research impacting clinical care and hear from experts within our organization.

We would like to thank the SOCCA Board and all SOCCA members for their support for all the educational endeavors over the past year. All this content would not have been possible without the work of every member of the education committee, and we sincerely appreciate their enthusiasm and hard work. We highly encourage anyone with an interest in developing and creating new educational content for SOCCA to apply for committee membership in the coming year.

Authors

Allison Dalton, MD

Chair, SOCCA Education Committee

University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

Kunal Karamchandani, MD, FCCM

Vice Chair, SOCCA Education Committee

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Dallas, Texas