Surgeon Educator Support Program (SESP)

Executive Summary

The Surgeon Educator Support Program (SESP) is a comprehensive initiative designed to help faculty members in the Department of Surgery (“surgeon educators”) with all aspects of teaching and education. This includes tips for meeting their responsibilities.

I envision posting advice around promotion, appeals for low teaching scores and information about education awards. In addition, I would like to offer resources to support scholarship in education if you are interested in taking your ideas about education in that direction.

Certainly, I would welcome discussion and debate around how surgical education can thrive in an era when the healthcare system is changing rapidly, and learners often feel unsure of how to respond.

Here are a few examples:

1. How to access your teaching data (LACT) through the Faculty of Medicine websites.
2. How to Appeal Low TES
3. Theory-backed and evidence-based resources to improve your teaching.  
4. Tips on applying for promotion.
5. Updates on my advocacy work with the Faculty of Medicine to promote the great work that surgeon educators are doing.  
6. Links to external resources, such as the ACS suite of tools.  
7. Ideas for advocating for surgeon educators. Examples include developing Boyer’s model of scholarship to reward a much wider variety of educational activity to ensure surgeon educators receive appropriate credit for this work.  
8. Summary of work with the RCPSC and surgery Specialty Committees on EPAs and their utility.  

• Related: Notes on the evolution of CBD.  (I plan to upload more in the FAQ section, currently under development.)  

Here are a few more ideas, currently under development:

Documents, Published Articles and Essays:

1. A validity framework for interpreting TES data and improving its quality.

• Relevance to future patient outcomes

2. How did we get to a culture of grade inflation?  

• Why is there a penalty for giving honest feedback?

3. Recent paper by Olle ten Cate et al. (I am a co-author) that talks about the tension between inclusivity and maintaining standards.