2022 ACGME Annual Educational Conference Wrap-Up Open Access

Five pre-conferences, each tailored to a specific role in GME, highlighted community, connection, and deep collective learning.

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  GettingBack to Bedside: Enhancing Meaningful Physician-Patient Connections in GME assembled residents and fellows to explore how and where they make meaningful connections in their programs and to develop a plan and the skills to implement in their own institutions.

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  The annual Coordinator Forum Pre-Conference, themed “Empowered and Thriving,” focused on adapting and succeeding in ever-changing and challenging environments.

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  The co-sponsored ACGME/AOGME Osteopathic Recognition Pre-Conference convened Directors of Osteopathic Education and osteopathic faculty members from programs with ACGME Osteopathic Recognition.

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  An Introductory Course for New Program Directors provided a big-picture view of the ACGME, as well as specific tips and details for those new to running an ACGME-accredited residency or fellowship program.

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  DIO 101: The Basics of Institutional Accreditation, designed for designated institutional officials (DIOs) who are new to the role or to ACGME accreditation, provided important information on the institutional accreditation process.

Attendees heard a call to action for the GME community from ACGME President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, in his President's Plenary. “Our residents and fellows have done more… for all of us, especially the patients of the United States, and we owe them the debt of gratitude and the debt of responsibility as educators to prepare them as best we can for the future,” he said.

The plenary focused on 2 areas: addressing GME in the era of COVID-19; and emphasizing the need to work together to recognize the sacrifices residents and fellows have made the last 2 years to care for the American public by preparing them for their transition to independent practice. To address the challenges of advancing residents and fellows in the waning pandemic, Dr. Nasca called on the GME community to prioritize the following:

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  take care of self in order to help others;

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  support and heal faculty and staff members, department leaders, and individuals;

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  assess the cumulative impact of the pandemic on the educational progress and experience of each resident or fellow and incoming PGY-1 residents; and

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  prioritize this assessment.

Ideas for program directors, advisors, and residents and fellows included connecting to specialty certification boards, facilitating mentoring, and running a quasi bootcamp on essential clinical competencies, as the pandemic has shone a light on the need to move further toward competency-based medical education.

Holly J. Humphrey, MD, president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and former Ralph W. Gerard Professor of Medicine and Dean for Medical Education at the University of Chicago, acknowledged and thanked those who have worked so hard during the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of the Marvin R. Dunn Keynote. Dr. Humphrey contrasted the brilliant scientific advances made recently in society with a widening trust gap regarding science among much of the public. She noted that the fault lines for adversity also include inequities for patients, inequities for learners, a culture of incivility, stressors leading to burnout, and the phenomenon of “presenteeism,” in which individuals feel compelled to show up for work at all costs to themselves and those around them.

Dr. Humphrey challenged listeners to re-orient medical education using a sociocultural axis, to expand public health curricula and experience, and to bring rigor to the framework and assessment of managing uncertainty. To accomplish this, she recommended:

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  co-create learning experiences, noting that adult learners learn best under conditions of “high challenge, high support”;

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  adopt competency-based and interprofessional education;

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  eliminate the detrimental effects of the social determinants of medical education;

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  nurture professional identity formation, personal well-being, and belonging; and

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  eliminate racism and inequities in all policies, procedures, and practices.

The Closing Plenary featured Oluwaferanmi Okanlami, MD, assistant professor of Family Medicine, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and Urology, and director, Student Accessibility and Accommodation Services, Division of Student Life, at the University of Michigan, who shared his personal story, which is foundational to his message and professional mission. During the third year of his orthopaedic surgery residency at Yale, Dr. Okanlami was in an accident that resulted in his becoming a wheelchair user. Thus, as a disabled, Black, Nigerian, immigrant, cis-gender, heterosexual, male, physician, athlete, and director, Dr. Okanlami wove multiple narratives together as he discussed his own struggle to define his personal and professional identity through a framework of intersectionality.

Dr. Okanlami shared his involvement in developing an adaptive sports and recreation initiative in Ann Arbor, Michigan, public schools that allow every student to be involved. He challenged the audience with a question related to assumed (in)competence of children with disabilities: “When you see children with a disability as a patient, how often do you ask what sport they're playing?” He recommended physicians use the health care and educational systems to create change.

Dr. Okanlami ended his talk with a passionate plea to attendees not to let the diversity, equity, and inclusion momentum drop off, challenging the audience by asking, and then warning: “What do you plan to do? The past may not be our fault, but the future will be.”

How can you take program evaluation work you're already doing and translate it into scholarly work? The Journal of Graduate Medical Education (JGME)'s session, “Turning Your Educational Evaluation Work into Scholarly Activity,” focused on doing just that.

The session had 2 objectives: (1) to determine the steps for program evaluation, making sure they are consistent with accepted standards; and (2) to discuss strategies for improving that process. Led by JGME Executive Editor Nicole M. Deiorio, MD, Deputy Editor Deborah Simpson, PhD, and Associate Editor Dorene F. Balmer, PhD, the session began with a discussion of evaluation in general, noting that when conducting program evaluations, it is important that they be systematic, informed by a model, and aligned with program evaluation standards. Taken from the American Evaluation Association, program evaluation standards are:

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  Accuracy: Does the evaluation convey trustworthy reliable data?

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  Feasibility: Is the evaluation realistic and cost-effective?

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  Integrity: Is the evaluation fair and ethical?

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  Utility: Does the evaluation serve the needs of our stakeholders?

Collaborating with attendees during the session via chat, presenters applied these 4 standards to a fictional abstract they created that detailed a program evaluation focusing on technology and simulation changes for first-year spy trainees. While the abstract was invented for the purposes of the session, its methods and statistical results mirrored many abstract submissions to JGME. Finally, session leaders guided participants through this fictional abstract using a checklist they developed, breaking down each of the 4 standards into even more detail with specific questions.

Participants at the Annual Educational Conference were encouraged to visit the virtual Poster Hall and Awards Hall. Anyone can learn more about these by reading the multiple ACGME Blog posts in 2 series called “Behind the Poster” and “Honoring Excellence Q&A”: https://www.acgme.org/newsroom/blog/.

Attendees could visit the ACGME Hub, which featured virtual “booths” of various ACGME departments and initiatives: Accreditation Data System; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Field Activities; Distance Learning; Global Services; JGME; Milestones; Well-being; and Medically Underserved Areas/Populations and GME. ACGME staff members were available via Zoom for participants to ask questions at select times during the conference.

Participants also had access to live networking opportunities, a platform “briefcase” feature that allowed them to save educational handouts/reference materials from sessions for future use, and free CME for physicians/certificate of participation for non-physicians.

The ACGME looks forward to holding the next Annual Educational Conference in person, February 23-25, 2023, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee.