2020 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Abby Lyn Spencer, MD, MS, FACP is director for the internal medicine residency program at the Cleveland Clinic.

2021-2023 Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellow Angela Orozco, MD is an assistant professor of medicine and associate program director for internal medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The Fellowship is a jointly-presented award given in partnership with the New York Academy of Medicine.

Each year, the Annual Educational Conference is the venue for great community gathering, information and idea sharing, networking, inspiration, and more. It’s also where we celebrate the ACGME – and now ACGME International – awardees.

Stephen W. Trzeciak, MD, MPH delivered the inaugural Thomas J. Nasca Lecture with his talk, The Science of Compassion, which served as the final plenary of the 2025 Annual Educational Conference.

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.