Sumbit a Call for Abstracts for the 2026 Annual Educational Conference; participate in surveys to inform the revisions of ACGME Requirements in a variety of specialties/subspecialties; and participate in the Clinician Educator Journal Club. 

This week's e-Communication includes information on the Resident/Fellow and Faculty Surveys, updated Milestones that go into effect July 1, 2021, Review and Comment for program requirements, the Annual Educational Conference, and more.

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.

This week's e-Communication includes information on the Resident/Fellow and Faculty Surveys, updated Milestones that go into effect July 1, 2021, Review and Comment for program requirements, the Annual Educational Conference, and more.

As the current chair of the ACGME Board of Directors, Rowen Zetterman, MD, filled several important roles at this year’s Annual Educational Conference, presenting awards and introducing Dr. Nasca for his President and CEO Address among them. We caught up with Dr. Zetterman in between his activities to learn a little more about his experience the last few years with the ACGME and, in particular, at the Annual Educational Conference.

Dr. Hedy Wald of Boston Children’s Hospital-Harvard Medical School and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University was a first-time ACGME Annual Educational Conference attendee as a result of acceptance of her poster, Faculty Videos – An Innovation within Residency Resilience Skills Programs at Two Institutions, for presentation at the Poster Session. An avid social networker, she introduced herself to us at the Twitter Board on Thursday morning before the pre-conferences, and we continued the conversation throughout and after the conference. We asked Dr. Wald about her experience as a poster presenter and first-time attendee of our conference.

“Milestones” has been a part of the ACGME vocabulary for nearly 17 years now. In the final session of the 2018 Annual Educational Conference, Eric Holmboe, MD, MACP, FRCP, senior vice president, Milestone Development and Evaluation, kicked off a discussion about the Milestones today and the Milestones to come.

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.

ACGME President and CEO Dr. Nasca kicked off his Saturday morning session at the Annual Educational Conference with some “non-rhetorical” questions: Can anyone predict what the health care system will look like in 2035? Can anyone predict how long your residents will practice? 40 years?

After stumping the room, he went on to explain that it is our job is to prepare residents to practice in the future—not to arm them with practices, skills, and knowledge of the present. We want our residents to be prepared not just for 2018 but for 2035—and beyond.

Jamie Dow, EdM, is assistant director for resident education and training at the University of Florida. Her poster, Mindfulness in Neurosurgery: Improving Neurosurgeon Wellness in Training and Beyond (with co-authors W. Christopher Fox, MD, Associate Program Director, University of Florida, and Gregory Murad, MD, Program Director, University of Florida), looked at wellness in neurosurgery, which Dow says “has traditionally been considered an oxymoron.” However, as priorities among neurological surgery residents evolve and the effects of physician burnout are increasingly recognized across specialties, life balance and overall well-being have become areas of emphasis and an opportunity for program improvement.