Regional and Acute Pain Anesthesiology Post COVID-19 Assessment and Recommendations for Fellowship Web Based Platforms

Abstract

In today’s applicant landscape, the SARS-COV-2 pandemic has drastically altered the traditional model of in-person interviews shifting it to an online format often conducted by web-based applications. Fellowship programs and naturally fellowship program directors face a new challenge of standardizing information to be distributed to prospective fellowship applicants through American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) common application. Here we describe a set of 11 criteria recommended by other similar studies selected for evaluation of online program training platforms, where only 13.3% of the acute and regional pain fellowship program online platforms met 75% of the criteria with limited presence in areas of research, rotation schedules, list of fellows, alumni, and life in the area. Additional considerations pertaining to the types of procedures performed, evaluation, mentorship, academic involvement, and teaching should be undertaken by the programs.

Keywords:

• regional anesthesia
• acute pain anesthesiology
• graduate medical education
• SARS-COV-2

Ethics and Consent Statements

The study did not require an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or ethics committee approval as an exemption because no work was conducted with any patient protected information, medical records, or human samples. The following study is a database review study available for access to the general public.

Disclosure

The authors declare no competing interests in this work.