SIA is a collaboration of the University of Toronto (Office of International Surgery), the McMaster University (International Surgery Desk) and a part of the RCSI COSECSA collaboration, School for Surgeons. SIA’s continuing aim is ‘to improve surgery globally through building evidence based surgery clinical and research capacity’. SIA tries therefore to identify current best evidence on important surgical topics, teach evidence based practice such as critical appraisal through discussion and senior African senior African surgeons input, make this evidence more relevant to setting.
Impact
Over the past 3 years, dozens of African surgical residents have completed the online course, including an exam and contributions to the discussion board. They are better prepared to practice evidence-based surgery and for their final examinations conducted by the College of Surgeons of East, Central and South Africa. Faculty have gained skills in developing and facilitating online educational resources.
Student Experience
Currently there are no McMaster students involved, but the development of online curriculum holds potential to expand the participants to McMaster residents and to further develop evidence-based surgery courses locally including student-led program evaluation.
