North American Musculoskeletal Education Committee Chairman Larry Webb (center) at a recent AO course with faculty members Jack Wilber (left) and Ted Hansen.
Reports from the AO North America Education Committees
The three Education Committees (Musculoskeletal, Spine, and Maxillofacial) have been very active and productive during the last twelve months. The Chairmen's reports on these committees' accomplishments are included in the following articles:
North American Musculoskeletal Education Committee Chairman Larry Webb (center) at a recent AO course with faculty members Jack Wilber (left) and Ted Hansen. |
by Larry Webb, M.D., Chairman
This committee is the "senior" AO North American education committee, having been founded in 1988 by Jim Hughes, its first Chairman. Original committee members included Marc Swiontkowski, Jesse Jupiter, and Cecil Rorabek. Since then, many AO North American educators have served on NAMTEC, whose original mission was to organize and monitor all AO orthopaedic educational courses in North America, select chairpersons, approve faculty, and, most importantly, ensure that the AO courses are of the highest quality possible.
Currently there are eight surgeon educators who comprise the 1999 committee, with the same basic mission but with an increased focus on the educational process. This focus has resulted in the adoption of several alterations in course format and content over the past few years. An example of this is the incorporation of the "modular basic course" which came about after several years of work by Joe Schatzker, Jim Kellam and Liam Murphy. The modular course format has been embraced by recent AO course chairpersons and incorporated successfully in North American AO courses.
Another important accomplishment of this committee has been to achieve CME accreditation status for AO North America. This, of course, is an ongoing process with periodic reviews by the ACCME organization. Our most recent review took place last month in Chicago, with Jim Kellam, Joan Rousseau and myself representing AO North America.
Course "monitoring" is a primary focus of our committee. This entails site selection (several years in advance), selection of course chairpersons, faculty approval, feedback on course quality by on-site monitoring, review of participant evaluations, performing needs assessments, and instituting changes in course content and format accordingly. Considering that annually there are four or five Resident courses, two major Advanced and Current Concept courses, a number of specialty courses (e.g., hand, foot and ankle, osteotomy, pelvic, failed fixation, etc.), the amount of work entailed is significant. Our committee meets with a full agenda three or four times a year, and communicates at other times with uncountable numbers of e-mails and faxes.
Current members of the committee are Jim Kellam, Joe Borelli, Rick Buckley, Jim Hughes, Mitch Harris, Dick Lange, Chris Geel, Richard Stern, current taskmaster Larry Webb, and ex officio members, Joan Rousseau and Jim Gerry.