SELF Symposium
August 21-23, 2023
Intuitive Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California
See one, teach yourself one, do one.
The SELF Symposium was a gathering of surgical and educational leaders aimed at accelerating progress toward a future where access to high-quality surgical and critical care skills training is universal. Featuring presentations, discussions, and working groups, the SELF Symposium aimed to build a shared vision for and paths toward scalable clinical procedure training.
The Surgical Education Learners Forum (SELF) is a program that develops and evaluates training modules for clinicians in low-resource settings. The fundamental goal of SELF is to create surgical skill training modules that will support and increase the skills of surgical and critical care practitioners worldwide. These modules are designed to allow clinicians to train themselves on the simple and complex psychomotor skills of surgical and interventional procedures at the point of care, on their own time, and without the need for a constant instructor.
Opening Day: August 21
Participants learned about a growing collection of skills training modules developed through the Global Surgical Training Challenge and SELF. Leaders who have developed training modules presented their work and detailed their approaches to topics such as self-assessment, low-cost simulation, and self-directed learning.
Consensus Conference: August 22-23
View the SELF Symposium Participant Booklet for an agenda.
Consensus Conference participants collaborated in several working sessions that aimed to build consensus on how to scale clinical procedural skill and surgical training. Over two days, participants shared their perspectives across six working session topics: self-assessment, simulator fidelity, accessibility on digital platforms, procedure prioritization, evidence generation, and a roadmap for SELF deployment more widely.
The Consensus Conference was by invitation only and consisted of a modified Delphi process run under Chatham House Rules. It is the intent to use the outputs of the working sessions to develop and publish individual consensus guidelines in the topic areas.
View a list of registered attendees.
