ACGME Chooses Pathway Leaders for Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments Initiative

Today the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) announced the selection of nine Pathway Leaders, institutions that will form a Patient Safety Collaborative focused on creating and testing a framework for residents and fellows to engage with their learning environments in promoting a culture of safety.

The Patient Safety Collaborative is the first in a series of Collaboratives that will focus on optimizing the engagement of residents and fellows among the six Focus Areas of the ACGME's Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Program: patient safety, health care quality, care transitions, supervision, fatigue management (well-being), and professionalism.

The Sponsoring Institutions chosen for the Patient Safety Collaborative are:

• Carolinas Medical Center (Charlotte, NC)
• Duke University Hospital (Durham, NC)
• University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine (Reno, NV)
• Indiana University School of Medicine (Indianapolis, IN)
• Maimonides Medical Center (Brooklyn, NY)
• St. Vincent’s East Family Medicine Residency Program (Birmingham, AL)
• University of Kentucky College of Medicine (Lexington, KY)
• University of Pennsylvania Health System (Philadelphia, PA)
• University of Connecticut School of Medicine (Farmington, CT)

"The ACGME is extremely proud to be working with the nine outstanding organizations chosen for the Patient Safety collaborative," said ACGME Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, MACP. "Patient safety is a crucial component of residents' experiential learning. It's inspiring to see such dedication to providing innovative solutions and positive change within the graduate medical education community."

The launch of the Pathway Leaders is the second phase of the Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments initiative to promote transformative improvement in the clinical learning environments of ACGME-accredited institutions. Phase One of the initiative brought together eight institutions referred to as Innovators, tasked with critically thinking about ways to drive change in their clinical learning environments. The Innovators will come together on September 12-13 at the ACGME offices in Chicago to share progress from Year One and discuss how to begin implementing their projects and translating their work to other training institutions.

"We are already seeing a national conversation sparked by the transformative work underway through Pursuing Excellence," said ACGME Senior Vice President, Institutional Accreditation Kevin B. Weiss, MD, MPH. "With this next phase of focused Collaboratives, the ACGME and its 21 partners in this initiative welcome new findings that will help to drive culture change within the clinical learning environments where residents and fellows learn to take care of patients."

Pursuing Excellence grew out of the ACGME's CLER Program, which provides feedback to the nation's teaching hospitals, medical centers, health systems, and other clinical settings in the areas of patient safety, health care quality, care transitions, supervision, fatigue management (well-being), and professionalism.