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.

Lauren Wojnarowski, MA is the ACGME's Associate Director, Educational Projects, working in the Education Department's Educational Activities team. She is one of the planners of the Annual Educational Conference, and her team's role is to handle collection of educational content and logistics (besides AV) to produce the conference each year. We asked her to share some more about her role and what the conference experience is like for her behind the scenes.

Dr. Ashraf Mohamed El Ghul, is the designated institutional official (DIO) and Internal Medicine Residency Program Director at Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). His institution’s and program’s experience with ACGME International brought him to the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference and we asked him to share his experience.

2022 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Dr. Michael Aylward is the program director for the internal medicine-pediatrics program at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.

2022 GME Institutional Coordinator Award Linda Ortiz Morrison, CHCP, is the senior director, academic affairs and institutional coordinator at Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center. 

2022 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Nicole Paradise Black, MD, MEd is a professor of pediatrics, the associate chair of pediatrics education, and the program director for pediatrics at University of Florida Health’s Shands Children’s Hospital. 

2022 GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Awardee Jennifer Rodgers, MS, C-TAGME works as the director of graduate medical education and institutional coordinator at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine 

2022 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Dr. Heather L. Burrows is the program director for pediatrics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.