Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care

Education

Residency education is one of the most critical areas of the medical profession. When residents are trained with the precision and passion that is required in medicine, the patients and community will receive the best treatment. This is why the residency education at Massachusetts General Hospital is taken seriously. Education is of paramount importance at MGH. Supervision is enforced to ensure the highest quality of treatment that residents are able to provide to patients. Supervision from experienced physicians to residents allows plenty of room for learning and growth on behalf of the residents in the field of the medical profession.

The education of the residents at MGH starts with a focus on rigour and knowledge. Specific cases are chosen by our experienced faculty that aim to challenge residents to find the answers that will help patients in the safest ways possible. A snapshot of the education of residents at Massachusetts General Hospital includes the following:

• A tutorial process to assess the knowledge of the resident. Tutorials help residents become familiar with how things work at MGH and how to help patients in a thorough manner.
• First-hand knowledge of the simulator is gained by residents by spending an extensive day with the simulator under the guidance of experienced faculty staff members at Massachusetts General Hospital. Our dedication to giving residents experience by using innovative models such as the simulator cements our commitment to educating the best residents in the US medical community and the world.
• The rotation system that we use at MGH allows residents to get a full breadth and scope of the work they will achieve at Massachusetts General Hospital. There are two stages of rotations used at MGH: basic and advanced. These rotation stages allow residents to take on electives to ensure that their medical knowledge is rich and diverse, two qualities needed to be an excellent contributor to medicine.
• At Massachusetts General Hospital, we believe that residents receive the sharpest training through exercise that test their decision-making skills. One example that we use at MGH for senior residents is to test their ability to make decisions under pressure. This could include anything from taking guidance from supervisors yet being able to come to their own conclusions to exercising the correct decisions on how to manage a group of junior residents under supervision.

Our core belief in education is the importance of investing in programs, seminars and workshops. Residents will learn from the best in the fields of anesthesia, pain care and pain treatment when they are at Massachusetts General Hospital. We achieve this by giving residents the chance to further their wells of knowledge with didactic programs. These programs work in the following way:

• A focus on knowledge: The didactic programs at MGH for residents have detailed syllabi and content on key issues and topics that residents are expected to have thorough knowledge of.
• Success: Our programs have an impressive success rate. This year alone, the senior residents of MGH achieved 100% pass rate on their first attempts of the ABA written examination. This illuminates the intellectual strength of our senior residents and the rigour of the teaching expertise of the Massachusetts General Hospital's faculty.

At MGH, we prize the school of thought that encourages residents to question faculty about why things happen in a specific way in medicine. We want to encourage thought, debate and research about anesthesia and pain. We achieve this with the inclusion of the Journal Club, a space to allow discussion to grow about anesthesia and pain-related disorders.

As the need to know more about anesthesia and how pain works, our senior residents who train at MGH are in demand from all sectors of the field of medicine. We are dedicated to their success and growth, as well as nurturing the study of anesthesia. With events such as department pizza parties for residents, a group integration event called the Outward Bound and the introduction of our Beecher Scholarships, the Massachusetts General Hospital is the destination for residents to grow their knowledge in an academic environment that is dedicated to their well-being beyond the walls of the hospital.