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.

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.

A guest post from Dr. Ali Mendelson spotlights how participating in the ACGME's Back to Bedside initiative has added value to her fellowship and clinical experience in hospice and palliative medicine.

Registration is officially open for #ACGME2020 – the 2020 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, taking place in San Diego, California February 27-29. Learn what's new, what's different, and why you definitely don't want to miss it!