Simulation-based otorhinolaryngology emergencies boot camp: Part 1: Curriculum design and airway skills.

INTRODUCTION Simulation-based boot camps provide novice trainees with an accelerated introduction to the essential skills needed for successful clinical management and professional development in a format that is valued by both residents and faculty. Boot camps have been described in numerous surgical and medical disciplines, including pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, cardiothoracic, and general and neurosurgery. Based loosely on the concept of military boot camps, residents actively participate in a concentrated variety of exercises designed to develop basic competence in relevant psychomotor, cognitive, and affective skills. Simulationbased boot camps are generally 1 to 3 days long, and the curriculum is designed to provide hands-on experience learning skills of increasing complexity. Boot camps are of particular value in smaller specialties like otolaryngology. Although each residency program has a relatively small number of residents at any given postgraduate year (PGY) level, boot camps enroll multiple learners from various institutions at similar PGY levels. Faculty can exchange ideas and teaching techniques as well as take advantage of simulation-based medical education not necessarily available at their own institution. This purpose of this article, the first in a series of three, is to describe the first Otorhinolaryngology (ORL) Emergencies Boot Camp curriculum design and basic airway skills stations; subsequent articles will detail the remaining elements of the course curriculum, allowing other institutions to implement this curriculum and/or develop their own simulation-based curricula. To accomplish psychological safety, formal objective evaluations are not conducted during the boot camps. However, formal evaluations of the boot camp programs by both residents and faculty demonstrate high levels of satisfaction and are used for programmatic improvement.