The Mission of the ACGME is to improve health care and population health by assessing and enhancing the quality of resident and fellow physicians’ education through advancements in accreditation and education. Although accreditation stands as a fundamental activity of the organization, education receives a similar priority in pursuit of the ACGME Mission.
With that said, one of the areas of focus in which the ACGME pursues its Mission via education is faculty development. Educating educators is a fundamental principle to ensuring advancements and innovations reach those on the front lines of educating and training residents and fellows, especially in the assessment of future specialist and subspecialist physicians.
This is the first post in our new series, Educating Educators, which will focus on this key area of faculty development.
Developing Faculty Competencies in Assessment
The ACGME’s Developing Faculty Competencies in Assessment Course, a multi-day course focusing on designing assessment programs that facilitate the longitudinal professional development of residents and fellows, convenes faculty members at all levels who carry major responsibility for the assessment of these physician learners.
This long-standing and popular ACGME course features interactive workshops that include theory bursts on essential assessment content, as well as small-group application exercises. Participants also practice direct observation and feedback skills in a simulation center. The course is intended to help participants develop the foundations of assessment and learn to build effective assessment programs by exploring:
- goals and core principles of competency-based medical education (CBME);
- practical and effective application of multiple assessment methods and tools across all Core Competencies;
- highly experiential hands-on practice, including direct observation practice using simulation;
- how to create effective assessment programs;
- how to approach remediation with learners;
- how to effectively design and run a Clinical Competency Committee (CCC); and,
- how to effectively use the Milestones and Entrustable Professional Activities for professional development.
Upon completion of the course, participants are able to:
- apply key principles of outcomes-based education in graduate medical education (GME);
- optimize the use of developmental assessment based on goals and principles of CBME;
- understand key issues in rater cognition, as well as their implications for effective assessment;
- select and implement appropriate tools to build an effective assessment program;
- develop effective group process for assessment and CCCs;
- improve approaches to use of multi-faceted longitudinal assessment data for professional development;
- employ effective practices in work-based assessment;
- use models to structure feedback conversations with learners;
- recognize struggling learners and develop remediation strategies; and,
- create a personal action plan and a program- or institution-specific improvement project for change.
Although registration for the next session of this course, to be held in Chicago, Illinois March 30-April 4, 2025, has closed, registration for the two-part, summer/fall course for July and October is now open.
“Attendees of this course leave with tools, materials, and resources to improve their individual educational practices, as well as incorporate them into training opportunities for their colleagues,” said ACGME Senior Vice President, Competencies, Milestones, and Faculty Development Laura Edgar, EdD, CAE.
Bringing the Course to the Institutions
As GME faculty members are often extremely busy and may have limited ability to travel to attend the ACGME course in Chicago, the ACGME established a network of Faculty Development Hubs, where the ACGME and previous attendees of the Chicago course curate courses for the local medical education community.
This initiative quickly grew, first throughout the US and later internationally. The Faculty Development Hub program has now reached 33 institutions in nine countries. Multiple courses are held annually around the world, with some focusing on those within the host institution, and others opening their participation to other institutions and educators.
The latter approach, which often takes place in the many international Faculty Development Hubs, has introduced this content to many educators who would not have the opportunity to access it elsewhere. For instance, a recent course held at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar brought together a number of educators from six countries, including Tanzania, Cameroon, and Nigeria. These regional gatherings also foster community-building across institutions and borders, all in the pursuit of improving GME.
Currently, there are Hubs outside the US in Oman, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates. Upcoming Hub courses are listed on the ACGME website.
Stories from the Hubs
Future posts in this series will focus on the various courses, both in Chicago and at the many Faculty Development Hubs around the world. Follow along and learn from firsthand accounts how these courses contribute to improving GME and strengthen the bonds between educators mutually committed to their missions.
This post is a part of a series, Educating Educators, which focuses on developing faculty competencies in assessment for clinical educators. The goal of this series is to share learning resources that the ACGME provides in its proprietary Developing Faculty Competencies in Assessment course and the related courses held as part of its Faculty Development Hub program. This series will also share inspiring stories from these Hubs, demonstrating the importance and impact of this initiative.