Health provider shortage areas, comprised of urban and rural regions with high populations of people struggling with multi-morbidity and poverty, often have a challenge with physician recruitment. Dr. Meaghan Ruddy, vice president for Academic Affairs and director of Medical Education for The Wright Center for GME in Scranton, Pennsylvania, describes how a teaching health center family medicine program operationalized as a graduate medical education safety-net consortium.

Dr. Carol A. Bernstein is the 2019 winner of the John C. Gienapp Award and the first ever women to be honored with the award--on International Woman's Day to boot! Dr. Bernstein is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at New York University. She has spent her entire career engaged in the education and mentorship of the next generation of physicians in addition to maintaining a clinical practice in general psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine.

Dr. Chinelo Okigbo is a PGY-3 Internal Medicine Chief Resident at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in New Jersey. She attended the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference as part of the Back to Bedside initiative. As a resident and first-time Annual Educational Conference attendee, we asked her to share her impressions based on her experience.

In 2016, a Castlight Health report named Wilmington, North Carolina, the city with the highest abuse opioid abuse rate in the US. In response, Joseph Pino, MD, MHA, and members of the community sought to safely reduce the number of opioids prescribed, increase adherence to best practices in opioid prescribing, and reduce emergency department visits due to opioid overdose. His poster, presented at the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, reports the outcome of these multiple initiatives.

John Madara, MD wanted to find a way to improve incoming residents’ ability to identify and mitigate patient safety hazards, address these hazards through teamwork and collaboration, and report safety events using an online event reporting system. Dr. Madara, the chief fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, worked with others to create an interactive, competitive “escape room” themed environment to stimulate learning and teamwork. His poster, Patient Safety Escape!: Engaging Residents in Patient Safety Education and Event Reporting, reports on the activity and its effectiveness in teaching residents about patient safety and online reporting procedures.

A panel of institutional representatives and ACGME leaders discussed the successes and challenges of actively involving residents in patient safety improvement as part of the ACGME’s Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments (Pursuing Excellence) initiative. The panel convened at a sunset session at the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Stacey Quintero Wolfe, MD, FAANS is associate professor and residency program director and director of neurointerventional surgery at Wake Forest School of Medicine.