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.

John V. Pamula, MD, FACP, led a quality improvement project focused on reducing burnout and increasing well-being among its residents. His poster, Multipronged Strategies to Improve Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance of Residents, was presented at the 2019 Annual Educational Conference, Engaging Each Other: Rediscovering Meaning in Medicine.

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.

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.

This week's e-Communication includes information on the transition to residency toolkit created by a consortium of medical education organizations; the Basics of Accreditation workshop registration information; and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer Forum.

Karen J. Nichols, DO, MA, MACOI, FACP, CS-F is the current Chair of the ACGME Board of Directors, having assumed this role in September 2020. We asked Dr. Nichols to talk about her professional experience, her role, and her experience with the ACGME’s first-ever virtual Annual Educational Conference.

In the poster, Waging War Against Physician Burnout: Overcoming the Barriers of Military Medicine with Personalized Patient Care Boards, presented at the 2021 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, Dr. Jessika Weber and colleagues present their project that looked at how customized care boards in pediatric patient rooms are helping young patients.

Drs. Lyuba Konopasek, Stuart Slavin, and Timothy Brigham walked participants through the ACGME-developed guidebook, “Well-Being in the Time of COVID-19,” and explored how the ideas within it could be implemented in graduate medical education in their 2021 ACGME Annual Educational Conference session.

2021 Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Joanne Valeriano-Marcet, MD is the rheumatology program director at University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine.