Debra L. Dooley came to the ACGME 22 years ago, initially in an administrative role with the Review Committee for Internal Medicine. She retires today, after 10.5 years as the Director of Educational Activities, where she leads the team responsible for producing the ACGME’s educational programming, and most notably the Annual Educational Conference. We spent some time with her before she left, discussing her career, her mentors, her legacy, and the renaming of the Debra L. Dooley Program Coordinator Excellence Award.

Linda B. Andrews, MD joined the ACGME leadership team in February 2019 as the new Senior Vice President, Field Activities. We chatted with Dr. Andrews to learn more about her background and her vision for Field Activities at the ACGME.

In one of the final sessions at the 2018 Annual Educational Conference on Sunday, March 4, a panel of ACGME executives, deans, a patient safety expert, and a resident spoke to the crowd about how medicine is changing and graduate medical education may need to evolve to serve patients well into the 21^st century.

The ACGME has been working with Chicago-based Hope For The Day for over a year, and we are thrilled to announce the ACGME is now a Hope For The Day Partner in Prevention, actively working towards mental health education and proactive suicide prevention.

Training physicians in the science of compassion not only makes for more caring physicians, it improves their abilities as clinicians and may help prevent burnout, said Dominic O. Vachon, MDiv, PhD during his Baldwin Seminar Series presentation at the ACGME offices May 22, 2019.

The 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference offers so many great educational opportunities that it can be hard to know which sessions to choose. One “must-attend” plenary session focuses on the critically important topic of physician well-being.

As part of its commitment to staff and community well-being, the ACGME is partnering with Hope For The Day, a Chicago-based non-profit organization dedicated to mental health support and suicide prevention.

An upcoming panel discussion and listening session, “Program Director Well-Being: Finding a Path Forward,” designed for program directors aims to create a space to share experiences and hear from peers on issues related to program director well-being.

Recognizing that the function of the US health system is at stake due to dangerously mounting health care system pressures, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM)’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being calls for immediate action to safeguard this precious national resource dedicated to protecting the nation’s health.

The family medicine residency program at Mercy in St. Louis, Missouri was recently approved by the ACGME for an optional fourth year focusing on leading community efforts in public health care related to obesity and associated conditions.