A Premier Education Institute: N-CASE is accredited by the American College of Surgeons as a premier education institute. With a strong background in curriculum development, N-CASE continues to be a national leader in the development and implementation of innovative assessments designed to inform learners and instructors of critical learning needs. Verifying clinical skills proficiency and learning transfer are key steps in the learning activities that take place at N-CASE.

N-CASE courses focus on technical skills acquisition and critical decision making for students, residents, and practicing clinicians. Sound learning theories guide our course development and implementation. We use locally developed educational technologies and assessment tools to facilitate our training efforts. Medical students, residents, and current faculty members are offered the opportunity to practice everything from relatively basic IV catheterization to more challenging, cutting-edge laparoscopic techniques.

The Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery:  The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) organization recently developed a tool, termed the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS), which can be used to educate and then test the competence of surgeons in the basic cognitive knowledge and technical skills of laparoscopic surgery. This program is designed to assure that all surgeons practicing laparoscopic surgery possess the cognitive and technical skills necessary to perform basic laparoscopic operations safely. This program is to be administered at a small number of regional test sites throughout North America. N-CASE has been established as one of these centers.

Laparoscopic Ventral Hernia Surgery Simulation: In this seminar class, residents are tested on their decision-making abilities in the laparoscopic ventral hernia procedure. The objectives include resident judgment of port placement based on ergonomics and location of the hernia defect, identifying the hernia using the laparoscopic camera, determining the appropriate required measures to repair the defect, judging when to choose the open method vs. the closed (laparoscopic) method, and selection of appropriate size and type of repair mesh.

Clerkship Simulation-based Training: In this clerkship training series, we use Dr. Carla Pugh’s patented simulator technology to assess third year medical students from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in their ability to perform clinical breast examinations. The purpose of this course is to prepare medical students for their upcoming clinical clerkship rotations. The breast examination simulators used in this training have different clinical presentations and are instrumented with sensors in order to assess location and pressure of students’ palpation of the breast.  Performance objectives include completing a comprehensive clinical breast examination, accurately determining the consistency of the breast model, and providing probable diagnoses regarding the location of any masses. Once the simulation activity is completed, faculty members perform clinical breast examinations on the models and provide feedback to students on their own clinical findings.