FirstCase Academy by SurgSoul
How our content is made
Who writes the practice questions, case cards and flashcards in Academy, what they are based on, what has been reviewed so far, and how to tell us when something is wrong.
Who writes it
FirstCase Academy is built by working OR staff at SurgSoul. William Guglielmo, SurgSoul’s founder, wrote the original practice question banks and the intraoperative scenarios, clinically reviewed the generic starter case cards, and took most of the instrument photographs; the others are licensed images, credited on their pages. The newest questions were written to the NBSTSA CST content outline from published references, and each is labelled as awaiting clinical review until it has had one.
What is in Academy today
- 1,000 original practice questions. Every one explains its answer, 593 list their references, and 492 are tagged to a domain of the NBSTSA CST content outline.
- 232 of those, the newest (added in late September and early October 2026), were published awaiting clinical review. They are being reviewed in batches, and each is marked reviewed only after it has been.
- 106 instrument flashcards. Only reviewed cards appear in the free public guide; the rest stay in the app until they have been reviewed.
- 10 generic starter case cards, clinically reviewed before release. They are not any real surgeon’s preferences.
- 100 intraoperative judgment scenarios and 6 unfolding clinical cases.
What it is based on
Questions are written to the domains of the NBSTSA CST Examination Content Outline. Rationales and references draw on published sources such as AST guidance, the CDC, AHRQ’s TeamSTEPPS material, the AO Surgery Reference, manufacturer instructions for use, professional societies and open textbooks. A reference supports the principle a question teaches; it is not an endorsement of the question by the publisher.
Every question explains why its best answer is right, and the newer questions explain every option, so a wrong answer teaches something too.
What it is not
- Our questions are original practice questions, not official exam items, and a practice score does not predict an exam result.
- Starter case cards are generic. They are not any real surgeon’s preferences; the surgeon’s own card always wins.
- Academy is independent of AST, ARC/STSA, NBSTSA and NCCT, and none of them has reviewed or endorsed its content.
- It is a training aid, not policy. Facility policy, AST and AORN guidelines, your instructors and the surgeon’s preference card come first.
How content is reviewed
Clinical content is reviewed before it is marked reviewed, and the review is recorded with the content: who reviewed it and when. The starter case cards were reviewed before release. Content that has not been reviewed yet says so in the content files, and is reviewed in batches. A correction after a review gets its own review.
Found a mistake?
Tell us. In the app, open the menu and choose Send feedback, and say which question or card you were on; or email admin@surgsoul.com. We check it against the references, correct it if it is wrong, and record the change. Notable corrections are listed in What’s new.