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.

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).

With planning and enrollment underway for the SECOND trial, the ACGME decided to interview principal investigators Karl Bilimoria, MD, MS and Yue-Yung Hu, MD, MPH to get more background and information about the study and how to participate.

The ACGME's Developing Faculty Competencies in Assessment course in Chicago, as well as a growing number of regional courses based on it, teach practical and effective applications of multiple assessment methods and tools; guidance for creating effective assessment programs; and techniques to most effectively use the Milestones and Entrustable Professional Activities for professional development.

Dr. Lynne Kirk joined the ACGME staff in September 2019, following a 30-year career in internal medicine and geriatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. We recently asked Dr. Kirk to outline her goals as the ACGME’s first Chief Accreditation Officer.