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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.