Case Study: UCSF School of Medicine boosts surgical residents’ skills and scores 20–30% with Bridge’s Practice platform

Improving Surgical Residents' Skills With Video-Based Practice

UCSF School of Medicine partnered with Practice (Bridge by Instructure) to modernize its six- to eight-week surgical bootcamp, replacing a cumbersome process of flip-camera recordings, USB handoffs, and manual faculty review. Dr. Huey Chern needed an easy-to-use, low-maintenance platform that would streamline assessment across geographically dispersed faculty and support deliberate practice of core motor skills like knot-tying and suturing.

Using Practice’s video-based workflow, residents watch expert demos, upload recordings, and receive rubric-based peer and faculty feedback for self-reflection and improvement. The program produced measurable gains—pre/post scores rose 20–30% on average, learners spent meaningful time practicing (50%+ spent 10–30 minutes and 80% re-recorded submissions), confidence and patient-management scores improved by about two points, and overall group performance and skill retention increased while enabling scalable, timely feedback and future use for libraries and remediation.

UCSF School of Medicine

Huey Chern

Associate Professor of Surgery and Associate Director