2020 ACGME Debra L. Dooley GME Program Coordinator Excellence Awardee Diana Lynn Brucha, C-TAGME is the program manager for obstetrics and gynecology at UPMC Medical Education, UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

As you review session descriptions and plan your conference schedule, here are five key reasons to stay through the end of the conference on Saturday evening, February 29.

The 2022 ACGME Annual Educational Conference will be a fully virtual experience for the second year in a row, including pre-conferences. While the conference will offer content in live, semi-live, and on-demand formats, the pre-conferences are almost entirely live, which presents a unique and exciting opportunity to connect and learn. 

The ACGME just announced the call for nominations for the 2021 ACGME Awards cycle. Learn more about the Awards program and how to nominate an exemplary colleague!

In the poster, Addressing Physician Shortage in Medically Underserved Areas through a Rural Residency Program Collaboration, Dr. Douglas Nolan explored how osteopathic physician residents may be able to bridge that gap in care as they complete their education.

The Annual Educational Conference not only facilitates great collegiality and networking, but also allows you to connect with ACGME leaders and staff members, to get detailed answers to your questions or simply to put a face with an email address.

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.

As a new academic year approaches, it is important to continue breaking the silence surrounding clinician burnout. During a highly emotional and personal panel discussion at the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference in March, Dr. Nasca and colleagues from other national organizations in medicine discussed how burnout and self-doubt touched their lives. Influenced by those experiences and others throughout his career, Dr. Nasca has positioned the ACGME to help lead the charge to address physician well-being.

With overdose as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, it is imperative that the nation—including the entire medical community—take responsibility for its role in creating this epidemic and identify and enact strategies that can address it. This is Dr. Leana Wen’s position. The former Baltimore Health Commissioner and current president of Planned Parenthood spoke about the steps she and the City of Baltimore took to address opioid addiction in the community, and what role she sees physicians playing in solving this problem that is devastating the nation.

Associate Program Director Kimberly Collins, MD of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint Petersburg, Florida set out to see how simulating conversations about social determinants of health (as opposed to in-class learning or immersion-based training) affected a resident’s or fellow’s ability to broach and explore these complex, often sensitive, subjects with patients and their parents. Her results are recorded in her poster: Improving Resident Comfort with Discussing Social Determinants of Health through Simulation.