A Scalable Model for Global Procedural Skills Training: Introduction to SELF

Around the world, demand for surgical care is growing rapidly as populations expand and incomes rise. Procedural skills are still largely taught through apprenticeship models that depend on the availability of experienced instructors and specialized training environments. These constraints make it difficult to scale training fast enough to meet patient needs, particularly in resource-constrained settings. The Surgical Education Learners Forum (SELF) is a global community of practice bringing together clinicians, educators, technologists, and institutions to explore a different model for skills training-one that allows clinicians to learn, practice, and evaluate procedural skills independently. This introductory article of the SELF series introduces the SELF community of practice, the 2023 SELF Symposium, the methodology used at this Symposium to converge on shared recommendations, and the series of articles that follows.

In August 2023, SELF convened a global group of medical, educational, and technology leaders for a 3-day symposium in Sunnyvale, California, USA. These leaders sought to reach agreement on the fundamental components of the SELF framework through a series of ideation and convergence exercises, using a semi-anonymized, modified nominal group technique.

The consensus output is presented in the four subsequent articles, which address in sequence: prioritization of procedures for training development, best practices for simulator design in resource-constrained settings, self-administered skills assessment, and strategies for scaling SELF training globally.

The SELF series of articles charts a route from the long-established maxim of "see one, do one, teach one" toward a scalable alternative for a world that cannot train fast enough by the old model: "see one, teach yourself one, do one."