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FIRSTCASE ACADEMY · SURGSOUL
What's new
A running log of the improvements, study tools, and teaching features being added to Academy.
Your exam date, asked once, up front
New learners now see “When is your certification exam?” at the top of Home. Add the date and Exam Prep becomes a day-by-day plan; choose “Not scheduled yet” and it will not ask again. You can set or change the date any time under Your exam plan.
One place to choose what to study
Flashcards has a single “What to study” picker: everything, one surgery, one instrument type, the CST critical-thinking cards, or your own. The count beside each choice is the deck you get.
An Overview home for educators
Educators now open on Overview: what needs you today (cases and sign-offs to review, attendance to resolve, learners who have gone quiet, learner reports) with a button straight to each list, and a short setup checklist for a new program.
Learners, People, Cohorts, the Feedback inbox and Backup each open as their own screen. People shows your seats, finds anyone by name, and keeps each person’s account actions under Manage. On a phone, the main screens sit in a tab bar at the bottom.
How Academy's clinical tracking works, on one page
A new page walks through a clinical day in Academy, from check-in to preceptor sign-off and instructor review, and compares Academy with typical clinical tracking systems. It also lists what Academy does not do yet, so programs can decide with the full picture.
Clinical evaluations, signed where the work happens
Students can hand their phone to a preceptor, who rates their performance on the five first-scrub criteria and six professional behaviours and signs, just like the end-of-day sign-off. Students can also rate each site and its preceptors; only instructors read those.
Instructors can evaluate a specific procedure and sign it, then the student signs on the same device or later in their own account. When a student's 120 cases are complete, the program director can verify it with a signature and a saved copy of the counts.
1,000 questions for study and review
The full Academy study library now includes 1,000 multiple-choice questions. The 132 additions appear in six CST Exam Review sets, with four answer choices, explanations for each choice, and references. They cover clinical decisions, procedure steps, anatomy, instruments, microbiology, sterilization, and calculations.
We reviewed the 100 recent CST Critical Thinking questions and strengthened distractors in 90. Clinical Cases now offers an answer choice at each of its 18 stages, with feedback before the next development. Those same 18 questions appear in Exam Review and count once toward the total. Case scores stay on the page; Exam Prep practice continues to save progress.
100 new questions, 100 flashcards, and six unfolding cases
Find five 20-question quizzes under CST Critical Thinking in Exam Prep. Every question explains the correct response and the other choices, with references for further study.
The Clinical Cases tab reveals each case one development at a time. In Flashcards, choose CST critical thinking to practice explaining your response before you flip. These are original study materials; educator review is pending before graded use.
Preceptor sign-off, right on your phone
At the end of a shift, open Clinicals → Sign-offs and hand your phone to your preceptor, the charge nurse or a CST. They see each case and your shift, confirm what they supervised, and sign with a finger or by typing their name. No accounts and no emails for them.
Your instructor then accepts each sign-off or marks it for further review. Programs can require an accepted sign-off before a case counts toward the 120.
A free instrument guide and a Question of the Day
All 73 instruments from the Academy deck now have a public page with the photo, the other names you will hear, and what each one is for, grouped by what they do. Share them with classmates; no account needed.
There is also a new practice question every day, from Academy's 260 original questions, with the answer and the reason behind it. Earlier days stay available, so you can catch up on any you missed.
Find any case in seconds
The Case Library now opens as groups you can expand and collapse: each surgeon, then body region (Knee, Hip & Pelvis, Foot & Ankle, and so on). It remembers which groups you left open, and cards appear as compact rows with your level beside each one.
A new search box finds a card as you type. Search by procedure, surgeon or shorthand like ORIF, TKA or I&D, or by something on the card such as an instrument. Back takes you to the list just as you left it.
The ten generic starter cards are now in every account, in their own group. A program's educators can hide them for everyone with one switch in Add & Edit Cards.
Case cards without the stock-room clutter
Cards copied in from a hospital's preference-card system could carry details from its supply room: bin and shelf locations like "(bin 10432)", and item or catalog numbers like "(Item #123456)". They only mean something in that one stock room, so they have been taken off every card in the Case Library, and they are left off whenever a card is saved or imported. Item names, sizes and quantities are unchanged.
Set your exam date and get a study plan
Add your CST or TS-C exam date on My Progress and Exam Prep becomes a plan: about how many questions to answer on each study day to see every question and redo the ones you missed, a timed mock exam each week in the last month, and a final review week with nothing new.
The Today card counts down to your exam and uses your plan's daily number, and a plan round shows you questions you haven't seen first. Only you see your exam date, and you can change or remove it any time. It's a schedule, not a prediction.
Today: a 10-minute session, a streak, and a weekly goal
My Progress now opens with a Today card: 10 flashcards and 5 Exam Prep questions, about 10 minutes. One tap starts whichever step is next, and when you finish one, the next is offered. A short version sits above the Case Library.
Any day with one step's worth of practice is a study day. Keep a streak going, with one missed day a week forgiven, and pick how many study days a week you're aiming for. It counts showing up, not getting answers right. Days are counted in your own time zone, starting today. We also fixed a bug that counted each Practice answer twice in your "answered" total.
Educators now join by invitation
Trainers in a school or program can invite another educator by email from My Account, on the Accounts tab. The link works once, only for your program, and expires after 7 days. You can withdraw it at any time before it is used.
The program code now only ever makes someone a learner, and the old trainer code no longer works anywhere. Nobody becomes an educator in your program unless one of your trainers invites them or changes their role.
How we count visits, without cookies
We now count visits to our public pages by day, page, and source (for example a campaign link, a search engine, or no referrer at all). The counts are totals: no cookie, no IP address, nothing that identifies you.
When you create an account or send a plan request, we also store how that visit found us, so we can tell which of our posts and pages actually help people. The Privacy Policy explains exactly what is kept.
Ten starter cards in every personal Case Library
Personal accounts now open onto ten generic preference cards for common first cases: laparoscopic cholecystectomy and appendectomy, open inguinal hernia repair, total knee and total hip, knee arthroscopy, carpal tunnel release, cesarean section, tonsillectomy, and cystoscopy with a ureteral stent. Each one has its draping order and case flow ready to drill.
They are generic teaching cards, not any real surgeon's preferences. Copy one to your own surgeon to adapt it. They do not count toward your plan's card limit until you copy them.
Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service
Academy now has a published Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, written in plain language: what we collect and why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and how to ask for a copy or deletion. We do not sell your information or use it for advertising.
Signing out now also removes your name from the device straight away, even with no signal, and results you earned offline are only ever sent to your own account, which matters on shared phones.
Clinical case logs and attendance for programs
School / Program plans and paid pilots now include Clinicals. Students check in and out at their assigned clinical sites and keep a case journal; instructors approve, return, reclassify, or void each record from one review queue, and every revision is kept.
Approved cases count toward the 120-case requirement in AST's Core Curriculum for Surgical Technology (7th edition). Nothing is switched on automatically: a program's instructors set up sites and assignments first. Individual plans do not include Clinicals.
Scenario Quiz and Exam Prep are now one section
They asked the same kind of question and sat next to each other in the menu, so they are one place now: Exam Prep. Everything that was in the Scenario Quiz is still there, as a collection you pick from the same list as the board banks.
260 new certification practice questions have been added, written against the current NBSTSA CST outline and the NCCT test plan. That brings Exam Prep to 768 questions across 22 collections.
Answer order is now shuffled on every question rather than only some. If you had noticed the right answer was often the second option, you were right — and it is not any more.
Rounds you played before the merge are kept, and appear on My Progress as history.
Flashcards are faster and safer
Ratings advance immediately, even when the network is slow. Undo, duplicate-tap protection, offline sync, and safe rollback are now included.
Expanded instrument study deck
The instrument deck now includes 73 photographed cards across cutting, retracting, grasping, clamping, suturing, suctioning, and specialty categories.
The picture is the question and the name is on the back, which is how you get asked on the day. They install with the app and keep working with no signal.
Progress that follows the learner
Personal practice records, private notes, custom cards, and program-scoped learning data remain available across devices and support offline study.
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