posted on May 08, 2008

Annual Hog Roast:  June 14th

Graduation Party:  June 19th

Posted by vwear 5:37 pm

posted on Apr 06, 2008

This year's Annual Change of Call Party will be this Friday, April 11th at Dee's house.  For directions, check her recent email.

See you there!

Posted by vwear 11:31 am

posted on Apr 04, 2008

The changes of the ABR Board Certification process were discussed by Dr. Dunnick.  The new format, beginning with the entering class of 2010, begins with a general competency exam given at the end of 36 months of training.  This exam incorporates physics and the (current) 11 areas of concentration, to be image rich, to be computerized and administered locally.   A second computerized exam, also image rich, would be given 15 months after residency completion, which would incorporate physics and up to four areas of subspecialty radiology.  This exam would be tailored to your practice concentrations. 

Changes to the fourth year curriculim were discussed, with the possibility of "mini-fellowships" being incorporated into the fourth year of training.  Potential problems encountered by both large and small residency programs were detailed.  Additional concerns regarding clincal and call coverage, the current fellowship system, the effect of the new exam format on resident education, and the future of matching medical students into radiology were raised.

Potential opportunities, challenges, and ideas of how radiology can use informatics to improve resident education were discussed, focusing on didactic learning, research language standardization, and quality control of large, shared data banks.  The role and incorporation of informatics in resident education to enhance active (vs. passive) learning, to standardize resident training (making information available to all residents,) and to provide documentation of training (especially given the recent requirements for a professional portfolio) was discussed. 

Finally, there is currently a shift of medical education emphasis from a "Binge and Purge" style of education and examination, to a "Life-long Learning" philosophy.  Dr. David Irby spoke about the Future Direction for Medical Education, which he believes will incorporate four main ideas - Intergration (connecting knowledge and reasoning with regards to clinical services), Individualization (developing focused expertise), Insistence upon Excellence, and Identity formation (shaping the identity of the physician).

Posted by vwear 09:13 am

posted on Mar 13, 2008

It is important that all of the residents become aware of the new Learning Portfolio system that we are implementing. I have much more detail about it written out in several of the new forms that you will soon be seeing. In a nutshell, your Learning Portfolio (a new ACGME requirement) will contain most of the stuff that Laura already keeps on file about you along with a lot of new stuff (much of which is just documentation of things you already do, but some of which will involve completely new stuff).

We have already begun the process with the current first-year class. The rest of the program will be integrated on or before July 1, 2008. This means that current 4th-years will not be affected (but there is still a little bit of stuff I need from you related to the old ACGME rules). Each resident will have an Educational Mentor (all of the 1st-years already do). You and your Educational Mentor will review your portfolio every quarter (and document the review) and you will review your Learning Plan (a new part of the portfolio) every year (and document the review -- see a theme here?).

I will give more details about how the plan specifically works, but you should know that most of the Portfolio will be kept in a folder in Laura's office and will be fairly similar to what she already has (though it will include more stuff, especially documentation of things you are doing). One part of the portfolio will be done online, and that is the record of research and scholarship activities that you participate in. This includes far more than simply your research project. We also need to document a lot of other stuff that you do, such as giving conferences, attending scientific/educational meetings, attending/participating in journal club, society memberships, offices you hold, QI meeting attendance, M&M meeting attendance, interdepartmental conferences (tumor boards, etc.) as well as any teaching you do (such as giving the medical student lectures). You need to be documenting all of these things on this website (even if you are not in the portfolio system yet). When you add an activity, simply select the appropriate category and add the information requested (this is all done using the "Add a Research / Scholarship Activity" link in the "My Functions" page of the website.

I especially need this information to be up to date for the 4th-years, since almost all of this documentation is required under the old rules, too, and we will need it for our upcoming internal review.

You will see a couple new additions to the website, including a link to "Generate Scholarship Report" which will list all of your entered activities in a printer-friendly way (you will need to print this page out each quarter before you have your quarterly Educational Mentor portfolio review). Another new addition is a link to some of the new portfolio forms that we will be using. These are in pdf format and links to them appear under the "Resident-Only Pages" portion of the "My Functions" page. Forms that I have included are:

(1) a blank Learning Plan - you will need to make a new learning plan each year, and you need to review it with your Educational Mentor (and document this review in the portfolio)

(2) a blank QI Project form - everyone will need to do a QI project. This will involve finding some problem, coming up with an intervention, implementing the intervention and quantitatively measuring the effect of your intervention. We will help you come up with a project if you need it. Multiple residents can work on a project, so we anticipate that there will probably be one project per class. More on this later, but start thinking about areas where you might be able to improve quality [one example might be to decrease the amount of time from when an ER study is available on PACS until there is a preliminary typed in the i-box].

(3) blank review forms to document your annual Learning Plan review and your quarterly review of the portfolio with your Educational Mentor.

Posted by Ed 1:12 pm

posted on Feb 18, 2008

Robert Hooker and Vanessa Wear

Posted by jhouser 6:18 pm