For the first time since the inception of the Surgical Education and Self-Assessment Program (SESAP®), advanced content that builds on SESAP is being offered in the form of SESAP 17 Advanced. Offered for the first time by the ACS Division of Education, the inaugural version of SESAP 17 Advanced debuted in the summer of 2020 and joined SESAP 17, which was released at Clinical Congress in 2019. SESAP 17 Advanced builds on the same educational foundations as SESAP 17; both provide the highest caliber surgical education content for practicing surgeons.
Like preceding editions, SESAP 17 covers the breadth of general surgery, in this case with 650 questions across 13 categories: abdomen, alimentary tract, breast, endocrine, head and neck, legal/ethics, oncology, perioperative care, problems in related specialties, skin/soft tissue, surgical critical care, trauma, and vascular. The questions address conditions that general surgeons might encounter in clinical practice. Subscribers can select as few as three categories, and other categories can be added any time based on learning and practice needs.
SESAP 17 Advanced offers in-depth content addressing complex and evolving topics written for those seeking more advanced knowledge in a particular area. Five modules are available, with a total of 243 questions, addressing the following areas: abdomen and alimentary tract, breast, endocrine, surgical critical care, and trauma.
All of the content in SESAP 17 and SESAP 17 Advanced is newly constructed for the 17th edition and shares the same format of case-based, multiple-choice questions. Concise critiques provide evidence-based explanations addressing all the answer choices, as well as supporting references from the current literature. Additionally, all content underwent a multi-year, rigorous writing and peer-review process with expert surgeon authors representing a range of clinical and academic environments, general surgery and surgical specialties, and practices from every region of the United States.
SESAP 17 and SESAP 17 Advanced also leverage the same web-based tools to create a robust, online educational experience for self-directed learning to facilitate expertise and excellence. Learners can highlight text and use the My Advanced Library feature to create and customize folders with notes and bookmarked material for easy future reference. Targeted search functionality, shared between the programs, offers filters and advanced strategies to provide focused, relevant results and record past searches. For those who want additional practice, modules can be reset and completed multiple times to aid in learning and retention. Finally, the program includes peer comparisons that display comparative metrics in real time.
SESAP 17 Advanced modules have corresponding prerequisite categories in SESAP 17. For example, the surgical critical care category of SESAP 17 is required to purchase the surgical critical care module of SESAP 17 Advanced, although the category and module may be completed in any order.
Whether one is seeking to stay current with the breadth of general surgery or enhance knowledge in a specific area, SESAP 17 and SESAP 17 Advanced are ideal resources. For additional information, please visit the virtual ACS Central, SESAP 17, or SESAP 17 Advanced.