For those looking for a fresh take on the murder mystery fiction genre, you can do no wrong picking up Australian author Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect. The second book in the Ernest Cunningham series finds murder mystery writer Ernest Cunningham invited to attend a mystery writer’s festival taking place entirely during a long haul train ride across the Austrailian desert. The odd man out among more established murder mystery authors, Ernest is faced with pressure from needing to follow up his one (and only) successful whodunit novel. That story just so happened to be more of a recounting of events of a murder he stumbled upon (the subject of Ernest Cunningham book #1 – Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone). His publisher suggests the cure for his writers block is attending the event, but without the advantage of real life event to spark his penmanship, he finds himself thinking how much easier it would be if tragedy struck the train. What are the odds it happens again…

Stevenson blends the fictional world of Ernest with the practical aspects of how to write a successful and gripping murder mystery. Frequently referencing S. S. Van Dine’s Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories (first published in 1928), Stevenson offers a playful recounting of the events of the 50^th anniversary Australian Mystery Writers Festival. Included in the fictionalized memoir are the rules for mystery fiction including nothing supernatural, murderer must be a major enough character to impact the plot, etc. A clever and refreshing take on the genre, Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect will be hard to put down for both seasoned veteran mystery readers and neophytes alike. You need not start at the first book in the series and can read this as a standalone, though there are reference to the prior novel. Love, forensics, logic, and storytelling are all a part of Ernest’s world. The question is not whether you should pick it up, but rather can you solve the mystery before Ernest does?

This will be my final contribution to the SEA newsletter as President. It provides me with the opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished in the last two years and where we are going in the future. We emerged from COVID hungry for contact and renewed academic vigor, even as we struggled with less time and money allocated for educational endeavors. As a society, we have worked hard to provide our members with enhanced mentoring, resources and support. We continue to work together to address the issues we all face and develop creative solutions to our problems. I am proud of our demonstration of resilience and enthusiastic attack on problems that others have resigned themselves to.

We have shined in our integration of research and technology into education. Our mentoring network for research is robust and successful. We share ideas on how to apply the latest tools to conduct research and facilitate teaching and learning. It has been a great joy for me personally to reconnect with former trainees and partners through SEA designed programs to help them navigate their research and careers. 

Dr. Lauren Buhl

Dr. Dante Cerza

The 2024 Spring Meeting of the Society for Education in Anesthesiology (SEA) in Philadelphia, April 19-21, was designed to bring together top minds in Education, Anesthesiology, and Cognitive Psychology, and thanks to a cadre of dynamic keynote speakers and the perennial willingness of SEA members to try something new, we think it was an overwhelming success. The theme “The Science of Learning” was chosen to shine a light on the basic and applied research in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience that underlies so many of our practical approaches to teaching and learning but is not always readily accessible to clinical educators. By bringing this work into the clinical realm through our SEA members, we hope it will inspire new practical approaches to teaching and learning and new avenues for anesthesia education research grounded in basic science.

Dr. Cynthia Nebel opened the meeting on Friday morning with her talk entitled “Effective Learning Strategies for Planning and Reinforcement of Learning” and returned in the afternoon for a follow-up talk, “Strategies for Development of Understanding.” She emphasized that effective learning doesn’t just happen but requires planning, and she introduced the concepts of spacing and interleaving. She also laid out strategies such as elaborative interrogation, concrete examples, and dual coding to help learners develop understanding, and discussed ways to apply retrieval practice to reinforce learning. For anyone who missed her talks or wants a refresher, learningscientists.org is a treasure trove of content from Dr. Nebel and her colleagues on these topics and many more. 

The Society for Education in Anesthesia (SEA) Well-Being Committee: Fostering Resilience and Building Connections

The Society for Education in Anesthesia (SEA) has recently established a Well-Being Committee. Historically, the work of this committee was housed under the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ (ASA) Committee on Physician Well-Being. In bringing the committee to the SEA, the hope is to strengthen the intersection between education, anesthesia, and well-being and to continue the meaningful work that was started under the ASA. This committee aims to promote the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of anesthesia professionals and learners across the spectrum of their careers. Let’s delve into the key aspects of this exciting initiative.