(Washington, D.C.) – Today the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) announced its partnership with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments, a four-year initiative designed to promote transformative improvement within the clinical learning environments of ACGME-accredited Sponsoring Institutions in which resident and fellow physicians pursue their formal clinical training in a specialty or subspecialty.
“AACOM is proud to join ACGME as a partner in the Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments initiative as we work together to enhance clinical learning environments and optimize the educational experiences of physicians-in-training,” said President and CEO of AACOM Stephen C. Shannon, DO, MPH. “We are committed to collectively leveraging the osteopathic medical education pathway and our experiences in the OME community to improve clinical learning environment outcomes and strengthen interprofessional collaboration across the medical and health professions disciplines.”
The ACGME will provide funding through a competitive award process. Up to eight Sponsoring Institutions will be selected to receive awards of up to $75,000 per year over four years, with the expectation that each will provide a 1:1 match of those funds. The initiative aims to enhance and elevate graduate medical education and prepare physicians for the future of health care.
“Given dramatic changes underway in the institutions that sponsor graduate medical education, the ACGME has committed seed funding to spur research and rapid innovation in the clinical learning environment,” said ACGME Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, MACP. “Pursuing Excellence is a catalyst for change, with the goals of enhanced patient care and interprofessional team-based teaching practices.”
The initiative stems from the ACGME’s Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Program, which was launched in 2012 to provide feedback to the nation’s teaching hospital and medical center leadership.
“Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments is designed to better align leaders of health systems with those of graduate medical education to engage residents in quality improvement and the delivery of safe, effective, and patient-centered care,” said ACGME Board of Directors Chair John Duval.
Innovations from Pursuing Excellence will be disseminated through a shared system of ongoing, collaborative learning, and will include three major components: Pathway Innovators, Pathway Leaders and Pathway Learners.
“Through this model, our intention is to bring about high-leverage changes that broadly affect the quality of clinical learning environments, explained ACGME Senior Vice President, Institutional Accreditation Kevin B. Weiss, MD, MPH. “A core group of innovators will share its efforts in Pursuing Excellence with an ever-widening network of leaders and learners across the U.S.”
The Request for Proposals will be issued following the ACGME’s Annual Educational Conference February 25-28, 2016, and the awardees will be announced the first week of July 2016.
AACOM joins the ACGME and 20 other national, interprofessional health care and education organizations seeking to rapidly improve the quality of the clinical learning environment in which physicians and other clinical professionals are trained. Partners will meet regularly and provide critical insights and expertise to inform the initiative over its four years. Visit http://www.acgme.org/pursuingexcellence for the full list of partners and additional information about Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments.
