In undergraduate science education, emphasis is often placed on teaching subject matter rather than science process skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving). Although important to scientific training, these skills are often not taught because science educators do not feel equipped to teach them. We therefore present a case-scenario activity that aims to facilitate the development of science process skills. This activity, which takes the form of a visual novel, asks students to generate hypotheses for the seemingly odd events that are described in the story. We implemented this activity in a science-process-focused course. Upon completion of the activity, we asked students to submit a written response to the prompt: “What are you taking away from the activity?” In this exploratory study, we conducted a qualitative analysis of these written responses to ascertain whether meaningful codes and themes related to science process would arise from this open-ended prompt. Based on student responses, four main themes emerged: scientific inquiry, student satisfaction, flexibility, and collaboration. These results demonstrated the activity was both enjoyable, and it successfully enabled students to apply science process skills. We offer this activity in anticipation it will provide educators with a tool to include these skills in their classes.

Objective: To determine the safety of a fully functioning shared care model (SCM) in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery through evaluating outcomes in pancreaticoduodenectomy. Background: SCMs, where a team of surgeons share in care delivery and resource utilization, represent a surgeon-level opportunity to improve system efficiency and peer support, but concerns around clinical safety remain, especially in complex elective surgery. Methods: Patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy between 2016 and 2020 were included. Adoption of shared care was demonstrated by analyzing shared care measures, including the number of surgeons encountered by patients during their care cycle, the proportion of patients with different consenting versus primary operating surgeon (POS), and the proportion of patients who met their POS on the day of surgery. Outcomes, including 30-day mortality, readmission, unplanned reoperation, sepsis, and length of stay, were collected from the institution's National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database and compared with peer hospitals contributing to the pancreatectomy-specific NSQIP collaborative. Results: Of the 174 patients included, a median of 3 surgeons was involved throughout the patients' care cycle, 69.0% of patients had different consenting versus POS and 57.5% met their POS on the day of surgery. Major outcomes, including mortality (1.1%), sepsis (5.2%), and reoperation (7.5%), were comparable between the study group and NSQIP peer hospitals. Length of stay (10 day) was higher in place of lower readmission (13.2%) in the study group compared with peer hospitals. Conclusions: SCMs are feasible in complex elective surgery without compromising patient outcomes, and wider adoption may be encouraged.

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