The Journal of Graduate Medical Education (JGME) has long enjoyed a presence at the ACGME Annual Educational Conference with great sessions and workshops. Some popular sessions from past conferences include Lies, Damned Lies, and Surveys, a look at how to design a good survey (along with how to spot the bad ones), Behind the Scenes: Your Paper from Submission to Publication, a guide to navigating the tricky and sometimes challenging submission and revision process, and Editors’ Hot Picks: Best Medical Education Papers. With a wide variety of expertise and extensive publishing experience, the JGME editors who led these sessions have always enjoyed guiding potential authors and discussing the medical education scholarship in other journals that are moving the field forward.
This year’s JGME workshop is called Turning Your Educational Evaluation Work into a Scholarly Activity. From Annual Program Evaluation meetings and resident exit interviews to pondering whether an innovation is an improvement, educators engage in program evaluation every day. So how can one feasibly transition this daily work into scholarly activity? At this session, JGME editors and evaluation experts will discuss strategies to design, implement, and report high-quality, residency-focused evaluations, as well as opportunities for scholarship. The program will be semi-live, meaning that while the content itself will be pre-recorded, the presenters will be on hand to answer questions and facilitate discussion on the session’s scheduled date/time (Thursday, March 31 at 1:00 p.m. Central).
As many of you know, though, some of the most valuable experiences at a conference are the personal connections made between sessions. To that end, JGME staff members and editors have always looked forward to meeting the graduate medical education community in the Exhibit Hall at the live event. And while JGME hasn’t been able to offer elbow bumps and bowls of candy in person, there will again be an online booth in the ACGME Hub in the virtual conference platform so visitors can still stop by and say hello.
This year the platform will have a Zoom room open from 2:00-4:00 p.m. Central each day of the conference (March 30-April 1). Anyone can stop by during those times and meet the staff, ask questions, and offer feedback and ideas. The room can accommodate group conversations as well as one-on-one and small group chats in breakout rooms. Staff members may be joined this year by special guests and editors, so follow @JournalofGME on Twitter and LinkedIn to find out more!
Like everyone else, JGME staff members and editors are looking forward to meeting face to face at future Annual Educational Conferences. Until then, we hope you will join us online and in the Zoom room this spring!
Guest blogger Kevin Gladish is an editorial associate on the staff of the Journal of Graduate Medical Education. He’s been at the ACGME since 2016, and is also a performer, writer, and storyteller.