During their presentation “Using Public Data to Follow Graduates into Practice,” at the 2019 Annual Educational Conference, Marc M. Triola, MD and Patrick M. Cocks, MD, from the NYU School of Medicine have leveraged large databases of publicly available information to help understand the patterns of health care practice and outcomes among graduates from programs once they have left the programs.

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.

The Caribbean nation of Haiti faces unique challenges in putting its philosophy that “health care is a right” into practice. Kerling Israel, MD, MPH described the work of Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante (PIH/ZL) to improve the nation’s health care through graduate medical education (GME), and outlined the challenges faced and progress made in her recent Baldwin Seminar Series presentation, “Improving Graduate Medical Education in Haiti through Collaborative Work.” The talk was presented April 3, 2019 at the ACGME offices in Chicago. This talk was also the first of the series to be streamed online for a live audience.

In August, the Journal of Graduate Medical Education (JGME) published its first International Supplement. It highlights the successes and challenges of meeting today’s global health priorities and provides a forum for research and learning in post-graduate medical education (PGME) around the world, fostering further research and dialogue. We talked with Halah Ibrahim, MD, MEHP, who served as one of the guest editors for the supplement.

Donna Lamb joined the ACGME in 2014 as Executive Director of the Review Committees for Plastic Surgery, Surgery, and Thoracic Surgery. At the end of this week she’ll say goodbye to her ACGME colleagues and pivot to her exciting new role as President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP).

Kelli Corning is the Associate Director of the University of Washington’s internal medicine residency program. She has been actively involved in program coordinator activities throughout her career in GME and participated in the full Annual Educational Conference, and also presented at the pre-conference Coordinator Forum. Additionally, this year Ms. Corning was a recipient of the ACGME’s GME Program Coordinator Excellence Award, which she received at the conference.