AO In-Hospital: high-quality in-hospital training—free to AO faculty
AO In-Hospital is the new name of AO Trauma's new hospital training series. It was piloted to great success under the working name AO Grand Rounds and is available free of charge for AO faculty to deliver at their own hospitals.
The pilots included modules on acute compartment syndrome, polytrauma, management of open fractures, and best practices in geriatric hip fractures.
After two years in the pilot and development phases, AO Trauma officially launched this innovative new educational product in mid-June 2022 with a community product naming contest aimed at finding a new name with broader, more global appeal. Throughout the multistage contest, the global AO Trauma community was invited to submit—and vote for—name proposals, with winners receiving vouchers redeemable for regional AO Trauma courses. The contest generated considerable buzz about AO In-Hospital: In stage 1, more than 880 participants submitted more than 1,500 proposals for new names. The contest as a whole inspired more than 5,000 actions ranging from submissions of names and referrals of friends to visits to the product page on the AO website. AO In-Hospital Steering Committee members Michael Baumgaertner, Kodi Kojima, and Wa'el Taha called the community naming contest a great success.
What is AO In-Hospital?
Meeting the recurring obligation of providing in-hospital training and education for surgical staff can be challenging, given surgeons’ busy schedules. Designed exclusively for AO Trauma faculty, AO In-Hospital is the stress-free way to organize high-quality, regular, in-hospital training events for junior orthopedic trauma surgeons, residents, and general trauma surgeons.
AO In-Hospital offers a free-of-charge, education platform comprising of a library of ready-made, high-quality, relevant, and topical surgical training modules. AO Trauma faculty can easily access the content online through the AO In-Hospital Dashboard and register to organize one of the four in-hospital training modules for their surgical department.
The highly interactive modules—each 90 minutes to a half-day long—enable AO faculty to successfully teach their hospital teams and meet their learning needs. Each module includes:
- A pre-event assessment to identify the team’s educational needs
- Prereading material
- Didactic lectures
- Clinical case discussions
- Group discussions
- Optional practical exercises
- Post-event assessment and event reports to analyze the team`s increase in knowledge
“AO In-Hospital is designed to enable AO Trauma faculty to deliver relevant and recurring learning events at their own workplaces, in order to provide value for the entire clinical team,” said Michael Baumgaertner, AO Trauma International Board (AO TIB) Chairperson. “This should improve their patient outcomes while expanding the scope of the AO's high-quality educational offerings.”