Daniel Resnick, M.D.
Chairman, CNS Education Committee
The mission of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons is education. The responsibility of the CNS Education Committee is to develop new content and new delivery strategies for this content to provide the CNS membership with a wide variety of quality educational opportunities.
In the past, the Education Committee has developed curricula for both medical student and resident training in neurosurgery. We have developed a large library of images, videos, and case vignettes that are available to members through the CNS Web site at www.neurosurgeon.org. The Education Committee is responsible for the maintenance of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) accreditation, so the CNS can continue to offer Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits for its educational activities.
Several important new initiatives are currently in the works or near completion. These relate to socioeconomic issues and to Maintenance of Certification(MOC).
Socioeconomic Course
The CSNS and the CNS are formulating a course dedicated to socioeconomic issues facing the practicing neurosurgeon. This full-day course will be dedicated to issues such as contract negotiation, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) regulations, medical liability reform, organized neurosurgery, coding practices, and ethics. The course is being offered as a practical course immediately preceding the 2005 CNS meeting in Boston. The course will be filmed, and a DVD will be produced for CNS members. This course will provide useful information for practicing neurosurgeons, residents, and fellows. This material will also serve as content for some of the nonmedical core competencies required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education(ACGME).
Maintenance of Certification
The American Board of Neurological Surgery has the responsibility for determining the nature and extent of qualifications for board certification. Program directors are responsible for insuring that their residents receive adequate training in both medical and nonmedical competencies. Teaching the nonmedical core competencies and assessing these skills in our trainees is a new experience for most program directors. The CNS Education Committee has been charged with the task of developing a curriculum, content, and potential mechanisms of assessment for the core competencies for the resident neurosurgeon. The purpose of this curriculum and the accompanying assessment tools is to provide program directors with examples and templates of content and assessment tools used at ACGME-approved programs. The curriculum has been developed and is in the same format as the remainder of the resident curriculum. This new curriculum will be published on the CNS Web site when completed later this spring. Some of the assessment tools are unique to the resident situation, such as the “360°” review with faculty, a series of structured interviews. However, with respect to the content regarding core competencies, much overlap exists with the MOC effort for practicing neurosurgeons. The Education Committee is working very closely with the SANS committee to help coordinate content and assessment tools for MOC.
New Frontiers
As we look towards the future of neurosurgical education, we embrace the ability to use emerging technology as an educational tool. At the present time, we are exploring the development of the online “University of Neurosurgery.” We envision an interactive repository of neurosurgical knowledge, with an extensive (and accessible) library, online courses (with CME credits available), interactive online case vignettes, online chat rooms, career counseling, and anything else that can be found at a real or virtual university. This project is still in the planning stages. We continue to work towards providing the best possible educational products for the CNS membership, and we are open to any and all suggestions for improving our products and services.
