Newsroom and Blog Updates on Pursuing Excellence

Dr. Ashraf Mohamed El Ghul, is the designated institutional official (DIO) and Internal Medicine Residency Program Director at Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). His institution’s and program’s experience with ACGME International brought him to the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference and we asked him to share his experience.

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.

Jamie Arsenyevictz, MPH, led a team at Geisinger Health System to develop a GME analysis tool, leading to the development of shared language and knowledge surrounding GME finance and value between the GME Office and Geisinger leadership.

Griffin P. Rodgers, MD, MBA, MMSc, MACP, the director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), presented NIDDK Initiatives to Eliminate Health Disparities and Train a Diverse Workforce as one of the Annual Educational Conference’s three featured sessions on Friday, March 8.

Lauren Wojnarowski, MA is the ACGME's Associate Director, Educational Projects, working in the Education Department's Educational Activities team. She is one of the planners of the Annual Educational Conference, and her team's role is to handle collection of educational content and logistics (besides AV) to produce the conference each year. We asked her to share some more about her role and what the conference experience is like for her behind the scenes.

Health provider shortage areas, comprised of urban and rural regions with high populations of people struggling with multi-morbidity and poverty, often have a challenge with physician recruitment. Dr. Meaghan Ruddy, vice president for Academic Affairs and director of Medical Education for The Wright Center for GME in Scranton, Pennsylvania, describes how a teaching health center family medicine program operationalized as a graduate medical education safety-net consortium.

In 2016, a Castlight Health report named Wilmington, North Carolina, the city with the highest abuse opioid abuse rate in the US. In response, Joseph Pino, MD, MHA, and members of the community sought to safely reduce the number of opioids prescribed, increase adherence to best practices in opioid prescribing, and reduce emergency department visits due to opioid overdose. His poster, presented at the 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, reports the outcome of these multiple initiatives.

The third day of the conference featured a morning of inspiring talks, including the President’s Plenary with ACGME President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, MACP, and a special fireside chat, “Rediscovering Meaning in Medicine” with Marvin R. Dunn Keynote Speaker Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA, 19th surgeon general of the United States. The conference wrapped up Sunday morning with “Conversations with the CEO,” at which Dr. Nasca responded to questions submitted throughout the conference.