New Resident Assessment Standards Slow to Catch On

Dr. Jewett said the ACGME outcomes project is expected to involve medical educators/physicians, residents, government and industry, academic health centers, private foundations, and non-physician health care providers. The outcomes project was part of a US Department of Education mandate that was promulgated in the 1980s, he continued. The project also was an outgrowth of demands from policy makers who were concerned about patient safety and privacy as well as about proper expenditure of health care resources, he said.

Complicating matters during the same period, hospitals were pressured to lower work hours for residents. That was supposed to give the residents more rest time to avoid resident-burnout and medical errors that were related to tired residents. However, the reduction in hours also resulted in a reduction in the time that training opportunities were available, Dr. Jewett said.

Change on the Wind

Session moderator Robert H. Miller, MD, Executive Director of the American Board of Otolaryngology in Houston, Tex., and Chair of ENToday’s Editorial Board, said the new criteria for evaluating residents is designed to get us beyond what we have been doing for the past 100 years.

Co-moderator, Paul Lambert, MD, Chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, said one goal of the new criteria is to assure that residents develop procedural competencies.

Dr. Jewett noted that the vast majority of the individuals he surveyed know that the winds of change are blowing. About 85% of them anticipate changes in methods of residents’ assessment, he said. But the bottom line aim, he suggested, is to stimulate discussion so we can optimize outcomes in graduate medical educations.

©2006 The Triological Society