Newswise — San Francisco, CA – May 16, 2011 – The International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) announces that its website, OpenAnesthesia (www.openanesthesia.org), has seen a total of one million hits since its launch in 2009. Edward C. Nemergut, MD, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Virginia Health System, started the website nearly two years ago as an online multimodal toolkit specifically designed to advance graduate medical education in anesthesia.
Dr. Nemergut, who also serves as the Program Director of Anesthesiology Residency, is the co-creator of OpenAnesthesia.org along with Robert Thiele, MD, also of the University of Virginia. The OpenAnesthesia website is a wiki that allows users to instantly author and edit medical content related to anesthesiology. The educational platform creates a unique opportunity for resident physicians to take an active role in their own education, serving as the website’s primary contributors.
“Open Anesthesia has allowed me to extend my ideas regarding education and learning beyond the University of Virginia to a worldwide academic community,” said Dr. Nemergut. “My ultimate goal is for OpenAnesthesia to advance the knowledge of anesthesiologists around the world.”
Today, less than two years after the launch of OpenAnesthesia.org, the website is an established educational platform with over 50,000 visitors a month. The site boasts more than 1,800 registered users, who are allowed to edit the wiki portion of the site. Dr. Nemergut serves as OpenAnesthesia’s primary moderator.
In addition to nurturing residents’ appreciation of the primary literature and fostering collaboration, OpenAnesthesia.org provides Program Directors with a tool to document core competency activities for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) mandated learning portfolios. The goal of OpenAnesthesia.org is identical to that of Anesthesia & Analgesia and the IARS itself, to improve patient care.
About the IARSThe International Anesthesia Research Society is a nonpolitical, not-for-profit medical society founded in 1922 to advance and support scientific research and education related to anesthesia, and to improve patient care through basic research. The IARS contributes nearly $1 million annually to fund anesthesia research; sponsors an Annual Meeting for anesthesiology leaders to share information and ideas; maintains a worldwide membership of more than 16,000 health professionals in anesthesia-related practice; sponsors the SmartTots initiative in conjunction with the FDA; publishes the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia; and sponsors the open access OpenAnesthesia GME website.
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