Dr. Nash's Address to AOGME Members 2019

April 30, 2019

Last year, AOGME launched within AACOM on January 1, 2018. At that point, we outlined our strategic initiatives, upcoming changes to the board structure, and the positive momentum we felt as we integrated within AACOM.

Since April 2018, the momentum has continued to grow. We can now see the results of many of our efforts and we thank you for your engagement, feedback, and involvement during this time of transition.

Let me briefly recap some of our key accomplishments and updates since April 2018. Following our membership meeting, the AOGME board held a strategic planning retreat in July to discuss goals and plans to align with AACOM’s new strategic plan and mission. AOGME, as part of AACOM, adopted the mission to: Improve the health of the public and enhance the training of medical residents by advancing excellence in the osteopathic learning environment and increasing the number of graduate medical education programs obtaining Osteopathic Recognition. We fleshed out our strategic goals as the following: 

• To provide resources to assist graduate medical education programs in successfully achieving and maintaining continued accreditation.
• To provide leadership and professional development opportunities that contribute to the success of AOGME members and their programs, and support members in adapting to their changing roles and responsibilities.
• To promote the value of the osteopathic learning environment to residency training and patient care, and provide support to programs in obtaining osteopathic recognition.
• To create a learning community of osteopathic medical educators to advance excellence and innovation throughout the osteopathic learning environment.

These goals were further strengthened by clear objectives including launching a webinar series on scholarly activity, the development of a clearinghouse of GME resources, a leadership development program for GME professionals, developing a faculty development online resource or catalog, marketing Osteopathic Recognition, developing an online common curriculum for Osteopathic Recognition and facilitating better communication among members and those interested in GME. In addition, we sought to launch a residents and fellows council and grow and engage our members.

We are pleased to report great progress toward meeting our goals. In 2018, AOGME hosted 19 webinars in 2018 including a scholarly activity series and a series focused on the transition from ACGME Initial Accreditation to Continued Accreditation for programs in the transition to ACGME.  

This month, we are excited to launch a leadership development program for GME professionals, GME Leadership Development Program (GME-LDP) in collaboration with the Academy of Academic Leadership that will utilize a hybrid model of virtual meetings/webinars this fall and a face-to-face meeting in 2020.   

Osteopathic Recognition 

AOGME has worked to develop a suite of resources and supports for Osteopathic Recognition to include efforts to raise awareness, provide educational resources and tools, and mechanisms for Directors of Osteopathic Education (DOEs) and others to collaborate and communicate. 

To this end, AOGME is hosting a listserv, Advance OGME, which serves as a platform to facilitate communication among educations in programs with Osteopathic Recognition and those interested in osteopathic training in GME. Additionally, AOGME recently disseminated a Request for Proposals for an online common curriculum for Osteopathic Recognition. The goal of this effort is to develop a national curriculum that will assist GME training programs in obtaining and maintaining Osteopathic Recognition. If interested in submitting a proposal, please contact us at aogme@aacom.org, the deadline for submission is May 15. Further, we are excited about progress on a marketing campaign for Osteopathic Recognition within AACOM, Osteopathic Recognition Matters: Programs for Optimal Patient Care.

AACOM’s UME-GME Continuum Initiative, established in May 2017, recently launched an online digital resource library that houses faculty development and educational resources, events, workshops, and more, for programs with or seeking Osteopathic Recognition. Since late January, the library has generated over 165,000 web visits. Submissions for resources and events are now accepted and reviewed by an editorial board led by AOGME, visit www.aacom.org/library

Impact of AOGME Membership

AOGME is generating great interest in the medical education community as new members continue to join. We are also extremely proud of our membership who continue the legacy of service as leaders both within their primary and volunteer roles in various national initiatives and organizations. At least 80 AOGME members are serving and/or representing AOGME in national medical committees, groups and initiatives. These include the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) Board of Trustees and AOA policy making committees, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Review Committees and Osteopathic Principles Committee (OPC), ACGME Pursuing Excellence Initiative, ACGME National Collaborative for Improving the Clinical Learning Environment (NCICLE), Annals of Internal Medicine, National Academy of Medicine, Association for Hospital Medical Education (AHME), National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME), AACOM UME-GME Initiative, AACOM Council on Diversity and Equity (CODE), AACOM’s Task Force on Ethics and Professionalism and more. We are truly proud of your leadership and service to advance excellence in osteopathic medicine and medical education.

We are thrilled to see excitement among residents and fellows to engage with AOGME. Our Residents and Fellows Council (RFC) launched in September 2018 and now has a growing membership which recently held an election to establish their first board. We are thrilled that some of our residents and fellows attended the annual conference and took advantage of workshops designed specifically for them. For the first time this year, AOGME also sponsored a residents and fellows poster session generating several poster abstracts from trainees. We look forward to supporting these and other efforts and initiatives for residents and fellows. 

Finally, for the third year in a row, we held another successful joint ACGME/AOGME pre-conference for Osteopathic Programs and Institutions at the ACGME Annual Educational Conference. We continue to strengthen our relationship with ACGME and other external organizations such as AHME and AAO. 

Thank you for the opportunity to continue to serve you all as Chair of AOGME. I continue to be optimistic and excited about our future and our continued contributions to osteopathic medical education.  

Respectfully submitted, 

Lisa R. Nash, DO, MS-HPEd, FAAFP, FAOGME