Guidelines for regional anesthesia fellowship training.

Background: The number of regional anesthesia fellowships has grown over the past 2 decades. There currently exist no guidelines for what constitutes ideal regional anesthesia fellowship training.

Methods: Regional anesthesia fellowship program directors and other advocates of regional anesthesia were invited to participate in a collaborative project to establish a standardized curriculum for regional anesthesia fellowships. Guidelines were created based on the existing template of Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education program requirements for residency education in anesthesiology. The resulting draft guidelines were distributed at a meeting of the program directors, who were then asked to forward all comments and relevant training material from their respective institutions to a coordinating institution.

Results: All received materials were reviewed, and selected components were collated into a consensus document, which was then reviewed, modified, and eventually approved by the program directors over a 2-year series of meetings. The program directors agreed to adopt the guidelines as their fellowship curriculum and to evaluate their effectiveness in 2 years' time.

Conclusions: The intent of these initial guidelines is to improve the quality and consistency of regional anesthesia fellowship training. The creation process also led to an affirmation of the directors' commitment to continued dialogue for the purpose of facilitating the exchange of ideas among programs.