For more than two years, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how every person on the globe works, plays, and interacts with each other. As what many hoped would be a few weeks of fear and uncertainty stretched into months and months, no one felt this stress more than health care professionals on the frontlines.

The ACGME looks forward to welcoming international attendees to the ACGME 2023 Annual Educational Conference.

2022 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Nicole Paradise Black, MD, MEd is a professor of pediatrics, the associate chair of pediatrics education, and the program director for pediatrics at University of Florida Health’s Shands Children’s Hospital. 

2022 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Dr. Heather L. Burrows is the program director for pediatrics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

2022 Debra L. Dooley GME Program Coordinator Excellence Awardee Skyler Kiddy, MS, works as the program coordinator for the pediatrics program at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and Osteopathic Medical Education Consortium of Oklahoma. 

2021 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee David Barnes, MD is the program director for emergency medicine at the University of California (UC) Davis Medical Center, UC Davis School of Medicine, UC Davis Health in Sacramento, California.

This week's edition of the e-Communication includes information the Annual Educational Conference; ACGME Awards; Review and Comment; and Milestones News.

2021 David C. Leach Awardee Lt. Guen Hunt, MD, is a chief resident in the Medical Corps in the US Navy at the National Capital Consortium at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, specializing in internal medicine.

At the 2021 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, Athena Gonzalez and her team presented their poster, Strategies for Optimizing Fit Testing for Residents and the Evolving Role of the Program Coordinator, about their work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure residents were wearing properly sized and fitted masks and respirators, even as supplies changed.

This is one in a series of project profiles of the ACGME’s Back to Bedside initiative, which empowers residents and fellows to develop innovations that foster meaning and joy in work and engage their patients on a deeper level.