On November 7, oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) residents from across North America participated in a research project called the Oral & Maxillofacial Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OMOSATS) exam. Although called a technical skills “exam”, the main focus of the exercise is to ensure that residents (and their teaching programs) can perform surgery within the parameters outlined in the CanMeds 2015 framework. The exam took place at the University of Toronto Surgical Skills lab located at Mount Sinai Hospital.
This endeavor was led by Dr. Marco Caminiti 9T8 Dip OMFS, assistant professor and graduate program director of OMFS at the Faculty of Dentistry, and Dr. Mark Shuren, a trauma surgeon at Hotel Dieu Hospital, Windsor Ontario. Participating residents rotated through eight stations where they were allotted 12 minutes to perform specific surgical tasks. The exam is the technical skills version of the common and well-known bell ringer OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Exam). This third iteration of the exam was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Caminiti wanted to ensure it was not delayed another year.