AO In-Hospital selected as AAE award finalist

AO Trauma’s new AO In-Hospital training program was honored as a finalist in the International & European Association Awards. The awards recognize success and share know-how across organizations.

AO In-Hospital, designed exclusively for AO faculty, provides high-quality, regular, in-hospital training events for junior orthopedic trauma surgeons, residents, and general trauma surgeons. The Best Education or Professional Development Offering category recognizes new or substantially developed existing career support tools or systems.

‘Well done’

AAE International & European Association Awards judges commended AO In-Hospital for its “lean approach, good user experience, minimum effort for delivery with great learning outcomes, adding, “Well done as an association to get the learning up and running!”

Currently, four highly interactive AO In-Hospital modules—acute compartment syndrome, polytrauma, management of open fractures, and best practices in geriatric hip fractures—are available for AO faculty to deploy, free of charge, in their own hospitals. All content, designed to facilitate 60-minute to four-hour events, is available via the program’s easy-to-use dashboard. Faculty can customize the content to their hospitals’ and learners’ needs and have freedom to select lectures and case discussions.

Since the program’s 2022 launch, a total of 69 successful AO In-Hospital events have been conducted globally at 55 hospitals. Eighty percent of participants have one to five years of regular experience in orthotraumatology and 20 percent have five years of regular experience in orthotraumatology .

Post-event evaluations show that participants particularly appreciate AO In-Hospital’s case selections, interactive case discussions, and practical exercises. Moreover, organizing faculty value the program’s ease of use and well-prepared educational materials, with many commenting that the materials are particularly well suited for focused discussion and active participant engagement.

AO In-Hospital was initiated by AO Trauma International Board (AO TIB) Chairperson Michael Baumgaertner, past AO TIB Chairperson Kodi Kojima, and past AO Trauma Education Commission (AO TEC) Chairperson Wa’el Taha. Together, they make up the AO In-Hospital Steering Committee.

Baumgaertner said the program “inverts the practice of surgeons having to travel to benefit from our proven teaching methods.”

“Having AO education at the workplace is a win for patients and staff while adding strength to the AO brand,” he said.

“Being selected as a finalist in the AAE International & European Association Awards is proof that education has to go where it is needed and be easy to access and low cost,” Kojima added.

Learn more about AO In-Hospital here.