We are among 21 medicine residencies (of 388 programs) invited
to participate in the Education Innovations
Project (EIP) of the Internal
Medicine Residency Review Committee (RRC-IM) of the Accreditation
Council for Graduate Medical Education,
our accrediting body. Our selection was based on our excellent
accreditation record, programmatic achievements, an approved
letter of intent, and a competitive proposal.
The RRC-IM has
developed this bold new initiative to facilitate innovations
in graduate medical education. They wish to integrate improvements
in medical education, improvements in resident educational
outcomes, and improved quality and safety in patient care,
and to advance competency-based education and outcomes-based
assessment. The RRC-IM therefore unveiled a pilot study designed
to enhance the flexibility of successful programs in charting
the future of internal medicine graduate medical education.
Programs with track records of success in accreditation and
ABIM outcomes were given the option of entering, by competitive
application and review-- a new, alternative pathway to accreditation – The
Educational Innovations Project.
Participants are a very elite
group of 21 programs (~ 5% of medicine residencies) including
Mayo, Duke, Henry Ford, University of California-San Francisco,
University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University, Beth Israel
Deaconess (Harvard), North Shore-Long Island Jewish/Einstein,
Scripps, New York Medical College, Indiana University, University
of Pittsburgh, and the University of Cincinnati, among others.
EIP programs are accredited for as long as (an unprecedented)
10 years and enjoy special, different, relaxed program requirements
to facilitate educational and clinical innovations. At the
recent meeting of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine,
medicine, organizational, and RRC leadership repeatedly lauded
the EIP effort and programs, referring to participants the “crème
de la crème”, the “best and the brightest”,
and those who will rewrite medicine’s future in education,
care, and accreditation processes.
The stated goals and purpose of the EIP are “to facilitate
innovations in graduate medical education (GME) that: (1)
Integrate medical education, resident educational outcomes,
and quality improvement in patient care (“The “Quality
Agenda”), and (2) Advance competency-based education
and outcomes-based assessment (“The “Outcomes
Agenda”). These innovations are aimed at training internists
to provide safe, patient-centered, data-driven care as informed
leaders in health care delivery systems, and to transform
internal medicine GME (graduate medical education) from a
process-based to an outcomes-based educational system. The
innovations and outcomes of this pilot project will be disseminated
to the GME community and will form a basis for future accreditation
requirements in internal medicine, and potentially other
specialties… the RRC-IM proposes a pilot study designed
to enhance the flexibility of successful programs in charting
the future of internal medicine graduate medical education.
Programs with track records of success in accreditation and
ABIM outcomes will be given the option of entering a new,
alternative pathway to accreditation – The Educational
Innovations Project… Objectives: Each participating
program must address the following major objectives of this
project: (1) To create program-wide innovations in residency
training programs directed toward advancing safe, high-quality
patient-centered care coupled with competency-based residency
education. (2) To facilitate patient care systems that foster
high-quality care and competency-based education in the residency
training environment. (3) To facilitate the development of
educational and evaluative tools that can be disseminated
and utilized broadly in GME. (4) To develop training models
that better serve the professional needs and ultimate career
goals of trainees.”
Our proposal focuses on humanism
and is titled "Read two poems and Call
me in the morning. Humanities/humanism at the bedside for residents and
other health care professionals. A controlled innovation to improve resident
education and patient care outcomes. Short title: Humanities/Humanism
at the Bedside". We are very excited about this potential opportunity
to improve our program and contribute generally to better residency education
and patient care. Beginning with the July 2007-08 academic year our educational
program was enriched by a bedside humanities-based curriculum, presented in the
context of daily didactic and management rounds, intended to enrich our residents'
education and train more humanistic residents who will perform better, provide
better patient care, and have greater opportunities for personal growth. Each
day we introduce literature, poems, music and art into the daily curriculum. In
addition, in order to enhance our daily curriculum, we hold a weekly conference, “Medical
Humanities and Performing Arts Lecture Series.” These lectures
have included such titles as “An Afternoon at the Opera”, “Medicine
in Literature”, “Narrative Medicine in Art” and “Vincent
van Gogh: His Life and Art”. We also have had guest speakers,
such as the famed Dr. “Patch Adams”, Dr. Sal Mangione, Dr. John Oberlander
and Dr. Richard Baron. During the 2009-2010 year we will be presenting
lectures by Dr. Faith Fitzgerald and Dr. David Pistesky.
Our program has
been featured in an article by Dr. Pauline Chen for the
New York Times and an article for the AAMC Reporter. Between 2007 and 2009,
we have presented our project to national meetings,
as did other EIP participating programs, where ours was extremely
enthusiastically received and generated a lot of excitement.
Whether it is our residents, patients, faculty or a national
meeting, we have received a very enthusiastic response to
our humanities based curriculum.
For the 2009-2010 academic
year, we are expanding our project to include the Internal
Medicine Faculty Practice – our
out patient continuity clinic. We look forward
to continuing our efforts and assessing our Humanism project
for its impact.
[ top ]
|
|
|
Internal Medicine
Residency Program
Saint Barnabas Medical Center
|
|
| |
|
Department
of Internal Medicine
|
|
| |
|
 |
 |
|
