AOGME Kicks Off 2020-2021 Membership Cycle

July 31, 2020

This month kicked off our 2020-2021 membership cycle, the AOGME board held a virtual retreat to review and discuss our mission, goals and objectives for the next 12-24 months. We hope to share these with you within the next few weeks and elicit your expertise as we work to execute key initiatives.

As we officially concluded the successful transition to the single GME accreditation system this month on July 1, 2020, we want to take a moment to applaud you as we reflect on the gains made. Approximately 98 percent of AOA programs that applied to the ACGME have now achieved accreditation, many programs and institutions have now achieved continued accreditation. In addition, there is a 20 percent growth in filled positions in the AOA programs that transitioned to the ACGME. In the last four years, ACGME reports a doubling of osteopathic medical school graduates in ACGME programs hitting 24,100 in 2019. Over 80 osteopathic physicians now participate as ACGME Board, review and recognition committee members, accreditation field representatives, and staff—several AOGME members serve in these roles. Finally, the first single match held this year result in 99.29 percent placement rate for spring 2020 DO graduates seeking GME.  

Programs continue to apply and remain interested in Osteopathic Recognition (OR), there are currently 233 programs with the OR designation. We continue our efforts to raise awareness and provide resources to our members related to OR through  webinars, the UME-GME digital resource library and the awareness campaign. In the past few months, the campaign released a fact sheet, a roadmap infographic on steps to applying for OR and a student roadmap. Finally, read our blog articles on the Role on Osteopathic Recognition in Lifelong Learning and Perspectives on How Osteopathic Recognition Enhances Patient Care. If you are interested in featuring your program in a blog article, email us at aogme@aacom.org.

Response to COVID-19

Tune in to our webinar on August 13, featuring Dr. Richard Chmielewski, on ways to incorporate osteopathic medicine in COVID-19 treatment. Dr. Chmielewski will discuss the history and pathology of infection with the SARS-CoV2 virus and ways to use osteopathic treatments in patients. Register for the webinar.

AOGME continues to hold monthly member discussion forums on topics related to COVID-19 and other topics related to GME. We hope you join us to engage in these member-only open forums and let us know if there are specific topics you want to focus on in these discussions.

Final preparation for the AACOM/AOGME Virtual Residency Fair is underway and excitement builds for this event. The fair will be held on Friday, August 14, 1:00 PM-9:00 PM, registration for students opened this week with hundreds signing up. Over 100 programs pre-registered for the fair and are now formalizing registration with the vendor, Career Eco. We hope that this forum will give you an opportunity to showcase your program and engage directly with medical students.

Through our partnership with the Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers (AIAMC), we are working to offer joint programming to respond to changes in the recruitment process due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us for the AIAMC webinar on Virtual Recruiting on September 17 at 1:00 PM ET. Sign up and register, as an AOGME member, select the AIAMC Member rate for the complimentary webinar.

Finally, this month, we hosted a webinar featuring Keith Jenkins, President of the Oniru Group, a Human Resources and Leadership Performance Laboratory, who shared an innovative model of talent assessment residency programs could employ to select the most suitable candidates. View the webinar recording.  

Thank you to all those who renewed their membership. If you have not renewed yet, please take a moment to renew your 2020-2021 AOGME membership today.

Please feel free to reach out to us at any time with direct inquires by emailing aogme@aacom.org  or calling us at 301-657-7881.

Thank you,

Thomas Mohr, MS, DO, FACOI, FAOGME