New ACS-AEI Curriculum Toolkit Available for Use at Your AEI

In early June, the AEI Curriculum Committee launched its toolkit, Interpersonal and Communication Skills Curriculum: Successfully Engaging Your Patient, Patient’s Family, and Colleagues, for your AEI center’s use among your colleagues with their various learner groups. Contact your Institute Director for more information on this new benefit for the consortium.

The goal of this committee deliverable was to create interactive curricula that address three key skills related to the Interpersonal and Communication Skills Competency of the ACGME’s General Surgery Milestones Project. These three skills included the resident’s ability to:

1. Deliver bad news to patients and their families sensitively and effectively.
2. Communicate with the members of the health care team and keep them up to date on the patient statuses and care plan changes.
3. Perform clear informed consent discussion for both basic and complex procedures.

This toolkit is also designed to be an efficient, accessible resource that can be adopted or adapted easily by AEIs to meet their needs and those of their learners based on resources available. The tool is recommended for the following audiences:

• Surgical program directors
• Assistant program directors
• Program coordinators
• Surgical simulation team members

For more information, contact Kathy Johnson, EdM (kjohnson@facs.org), or Co-Chairs of the AEI Curriculum Committee, Luis Llerena, MD, FACS (luisllerena@usf.edu), and Jim Lau, MD, MHPE, FACS (James.Lau@lumc.edu).