Becker's ASC Review (03/26) Newitt, Patsy

A gastroenterologist at Northwestern Medicine led a National Institutes of Health-funded study testing whether simulation-based mastery learning could address reduced training time and a growing procedural skills gap in gastrointestinal practice. Sri Komanduri, MD, said limited post-fellowship procedural training, productivity-based compensation in academic medical centers, and reliance on written exams have reduced incentives and opportunities for physicians to maintain technical skills, prompting his team to explore simulation as a way to augment training. The intervention produced major improvements, with minimum passing rates for polypectomies nearly doubling after training, increasing from 36.9% to 73.6%; median attending pass rates rising from 33% to 80%; and overall median checklist scores increasing from 86.67% to 100% of items performed correctly. Notably, before training, only 49% of procedures demonstrated proper identification and treatment of residual polyp tissue; however, that rate increased to 80% after the intervention. The study involved about 20 gastroenterologists at one academic center, but the next step is to scale the program across Northwestern Medicine's 11-hospital network.

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