Stories of the ACGME: Not Just Duty Hours

Jonathan Zebrowski, 

Resident in Psychiatry at MGH/McLean 

PGY 4

March 20, 2019 

As residents, we often experience the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) as a term associated with myriad regulations and recurrent duty hours surveys. Indeed, coming into the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference as a first-time attendee, I expected several days of interesting but nevertheless dry and technical discussions about the regulatory environment that shapes resident experience. The meeting — this year’s theme was “Rediscovering Meaning in Medicine” — was instead almost entirely composed of groups of dedicated educators and trainees sharing deeply compelling stories that have fueled a desire to continue improving the residency environment.

The conference kicked off with a round-table discussion between ACGME CEO Thomas Nasca, National Academy of Medicine president Victor Dzau, and Association of American Medical Colleges president Darrell Kirch. Each spoke at length about the personal experiences, often involving painful losses of physicians close to them, that have led them to think more urgently about the pressures of medical training They then discussed the collaborative between medical training organizations spearheaded by the National Academy of Medicine, as a means of unifying efforts to support physicians from the very beginning of their education through a lifetime of practice.

Afterward, two days’ worth of breakout sessions focused on issues ranging from implicit bias training for program leadership to novel mechanisms of engaging residents in quality improvement initiatives (as opposed to just teaching them about what QI initiatives are.) Most were designed to be highly interactive, this led to me making a large number of connections with a wide variety of educators all interested in reshaping the residency training environment. Most attendees seemed eager to almost immediately start implementing ideas in their own programs.

A particular highlight of the meeting was a session on mentoring and advising LGBT learners, which drew a wide audience including program directors, coordinators and trainees from across the gender identity and sexual orientation spectrum. I was also thrilled to reconnect with one of the panelists, Dr. Sheryl Heron, who was a mentor of mine at the Emory University School of Medicine as I began my own journey into residency. I particularly appreciated Dr. Heron’s constant focus on the idea of inclusion as a broader ideal encompassing the aims of diversity and representation in residency training.

Reconnecting with Dr. Sheryl Heron, an Emergency Medicine Physician and Assistant Dean for Medical Education and Student Affairs at Emory University. 

 

I attended this year’s conference as I am particularly interested in physician wellness, medical education, and quality improvement, and the content and depth of the discussions I participated in far exceeded my expectations. I have returned to Boston with new ideas that I hope to put into practice in my own future role as an educator. And the next time I take a duty hours survey, I’ll have a far deeper appreciation of the ACGME and the work it supports.