Traditional learning meets adaptive learning: the present and future of education in nonoperating room anesthesia

Nonoperating room anesthesia (NORA) and continuing education in this setting are both in a state of change. Procedures performed outside the operating room, especially those that require nuanced anesthetic care, are becoming increasingly prevalent. Numerous new innovations are transforming care across NORA settings, especially within gastroenterology, interventional and neurointerventional radiology, and electrophysiology. Concurrently, education for NORA providers is rapidly evolving, influenced by technological advancements and artificial intelligence.

Traditional learning, a mode of education in which each learner receives essentially the same content, is now blending with adaptive learning, a field of precision education in which dynamic educational content is curated for individual learners, timed and paced to their preferences and progress, and coupled with artificial intelligence-generated feedback. The mainstays of traditional education for NORA providers remain relevant: content created by professional societies, podcasts, textbooks, and primary literature. Yet new, artificial intelligence-driven approaches for adaptive learning have entered the scene: clinical decision-making tools, literature review and knowledge mapping assistants, online platforms for precision education, virtual reality, and synthetic patients or avatars.

This article explores the blending of traditional and adaptive educational modalities in NORA continuing education and discusses the implications and obstacles for the future.