Anesthesia: how to organize and train our teachers.

OVER 70 yr ago, Emery A. Rovenstine gave an address titled “Anesthesia: Organization for Teaching.” He stated, “Anesthetic requirements of the future, if present day trends in surgery are a criterion, will demand methods, skill and imagination beyond our present capacity. To meet this pertinent challenge, organization for teaching is essential.” Rovenstine advocated for supervised clinical instruction, frequent didactic sessions, anatomy laboratory teaching for regional anesthesia, case conferences to review complications, and discussions of the current anesthesia literature. His foresight was remarkable, as we still accept these as essential components of anesthesia residency training. Last year, during the Forty-seventh Rovenstine Lecture at the American Society of Anesthesiologists Annual Meeting, Ronald D. Miller, M.D., challenged all anesthesiologists to pursue excellence, especially for our training programs and specialty overall. He stated, “We need to be dedicated to creativity and the pursuit of excellence, which are crucial to both our professional autonomy and the development of long-term vision by the specialty.” This editorial will address two aspects of “teaching organization” that did not exist in Rovenstine’s time: how our teachers should be trained, and how to organize our teachers to pursue excellence in education.