Transform Skills Training and Learning

The Surgical Education Learners Forum (SELF) is an initiative that aims to sustainably transform surgical training by significantly enhancing access in low- and middle-income countries. Our goal is to empower clinicians to independently learn and self-assess specific skills through freely available simulation-based training modules.

What is SELF?

The Surgical Education Learners Forum (SELF) is a community of practice aimed at addressing the global burden of disease by developing innovative, cost-effective, and scalable solutions for procedural skills training.

The SELF framework allows target practitioners to independently learn the necessary context for a procedure, develop their psychomotor skills—skills that require combined coordinated physical movements and cognitive decision-making—through simulation-based practice, and evaluate their own progress towards procedural competency. SELF training modules empower surgical and critical care practitioners to learn and improve procedural skills at their local site of practice, on their own time, and without the need for a physically present instructor.

Central to every SELF training module is the ability for practitioners to independently measure their own competency through an integrated, self-administered skills assessment.

People of SELF

SELF is a diverse community of interprofessional leaders from all over the globe, representing various specialties and professions. We're a collaborative group united by a bold drive for creating scalable solutions to make skills training universal.

The Intuitive Foundation, a grantmaking organization based in the U.S., has been a key player in launching SELF and the Global Surgical Training Challenge.

Organizations involved with SELF include:

  • Societies and colleges such as COSECSA, WACS, and ECSACONM.

  • Universities such as the Makerere University, University of Global Health Equity, VinUniversity, Stanford University, University of Botswana, Indiana University, University of Michigan, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Addis Ababa University.

  • Health facilities like Yekatit 12 in Ethiopia and National Hospital Abuja in Nigeria.

  • Accrediting organizations such as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

  • Non-governmental organizations like the Primary Trauma Care Foundation.

Our Timeline

History of SELF

SELF emerged from a related effort to develop procedural skills training modules through a prize competition program called the Global Surgical Training Challenge (GSTC).

Starting in 2020, ten interprofessional teams, led by principal investigators from low- and middle-income countries, each created self-directed, open-source training modules targeting specific psychomotor skills.

The GSTC program incentivized the development of novel self-assessment frameworks, which would allow target learners to reach clinical competence by teaching themselves a specific procedural skill without requiring direct oversight from an expert. Similar to SELF, the GSTC program required teams to build self-directed training modules that incorporated knowledge acquisition, simulation-based practice, and a self-assessment framework for the module’s target learner.

In 2022, four finalist teams received additional funding to demonstrate to what extent the training modules prepared learners to competently and confidently translate their skills into clinical practice in the following clinical cases: open surgical practitioners learning laparoscopy, medical officers learning to place external fixators for long bone fracture management, general surgeons learning Z-plasty planning and execution for contracture release, and firefighter first responders learning hemorrhage control techniques.

The winner of the GSTC program, ALL-SAFE, created a cost-effective laparoscopic training module with an integrated peer-to-peer and artificial intelligence self-assessment framework.

Work with us to create your own modules

Let’s reframe the traditional skills training paradigm, one module at a time.

“What I would love to see is a new dialogue around how we actually teach surgical skills and whether we can have learners practice by themselves with integrated coaching into the modules, so that they can learn new skills on their own.”

Dr. Catherine Mohr, Executive Director, Intuitive Foundation