Global Laparoscopic Advancement Program (GLAP) is a collaborative educational program with international partners that strives to improve teaching techniques for resident training and laparoscopic principles that can improve patient safety and quality of care.
WHAT IS GLAP PROGRAM?
GLAP is a collaborative engagement between SAGES in the US, and the National Surgical Society and/or local government abroad. SAGES brings to the selected country a team of U.S.-based SAGES faculty who are experts in their field. This team partners with local surgeon educators, many of whom are leaders of their in-country national surgical societies, to teach the GLAP curriculum. The onsite GLAP course agenda consists of 5 days of lectures on “train the trainer” techniques, laparoscopic skills, curriculum development, and outcomes/data reporting.
Attendees: There are two training tracks throughout the week. One track is for educators who are practicing surgeons, and the other is for senior-level surgery residents.
Lectures: Lectures are divided between those focused on 1) mastery of teaching and 2) skills acquisition.
- Education-based lectures focus on how best to teach trainees in and outside of the operating room, as well as how to design a curriculum, give feedback, and evaluate trainees.
- The skills acquisition lectures teach both educators and trainees laparoscopic techniques through SAGES education resources such as FLS, FUSE, and Safe Cholecystectomies.
Virtual Pre-requite: Both selected educators and residents are taken through the Education modules (Mastery Learning). This includes breakout case scenarios and hands-on assessments. Each selected site is also required to put together a project plan on how they will implement GLAP locally with considerations that include hospital buy-in, sustainability, timeline, and assigned responsibilities. Each site is assigned a mentor and has 60-day scheduled follow-ups.
Hands-on Learning: Low-cost simulation is a popular activity in this program and the educators are asked to work in teams to create their own low-cost simulator. Toward the end of the week, there are two days of side-by-side teaching and operating with surgeon educators and residents in the operating room.
Enduring Partnership: GLAP is designed to be an enduring and sustainable partnership between local hospitals and SAGES. Data collection and outcomes reporting is imperative for continued engagement by SAGES and the sustainability of the program. Each site is assigned team mentors and is required to develop a 3-year project plan and present progress every 90 -days.
WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF GLAP?
At the completion of our program, we want our attendees to achieve the following objectives:
- The GLAP program will further develop attendees’ Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA). Our program focuses primarily on the procedure of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. We want our attendees to improve their “necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to be trusted to independently perform” laparoscopic cholecystectomies.
- The GLAP program focuses on developing Enduring Education. We want our attendees to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to create independent surgical education programs that improve surgeon-specific and patient-specific outcomes for minimally invasive operations. Throughout the week, we teach our attendees the principles of creating an educational environment for continued academic pursuits that involves a comprehensive and deliberate approach to education.
- The GLAP program hopes to create habits of data collection and outcomes reporting such that patient safety and quality can become a habitual part of the attendee’s healthcare systems.
- It is the goal of SAGES to empower host countries such that they may continue with the education and training of their faculty beyond our year-long partnership. As such, after a number of courses have been completed in the host nation and host faculty have shown continued engagement and success, SAGES will slowly transition to “hand-off” the course to local faculty. The local faculty can then independently run this training program for other regional sites.