The ACGME would like to congratulate Drs. Kenechukwu Ojukwu (Project Leader) and Erica Fermon, the Back to Bedside project team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine/UCLA Medical Center, winners of this year’s “Shark Tank”-style competition at the 2024 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, held March 7-9 in Orlando, Florida.
The Back to Bedside conference session, entitled “Innovative Projects to Get Trainees Back to Bedside: A “Shark Tank” Competition,” featured peer-selected projects from the ACGME’s Back to Bedside initiative, which funds projects designed to enhance meaningful contact between graduate medical education residents and fellows and their patients. Six currently funded Back to Bedside teams, chosen through a competitive process, presented their projects to “sell” to a panel of “sharks” (modeled off the popular television show, “Shark Tank”), who included members of the ACGME’s Council of Review Committee Residents and a current and former member of the ACGME Board of Directors. After all six presentations, the panel and audience voted to select the winner.
The winning project, “Knowledge is Power: Community Centered Pathology,” will encourage meaningful patient care moments by establishing a dermatopathology education clinic through a community based-partnership program to provide patients and community members with pathology report education. The goal is to improve patient and community health literacy and increase pathology residents’ exposure to the positive outcomes of their work.
The five other projects that participated in the session are listed below. Find a summary of these, along with all other Back to Bedside Cycle 3 project summaries here.
The Back to Bedside initiative, which empowers residents and fellows to develop innovations that foster meaning and joy in work and engage with their patients on a deeper level, will kick off its fourth cycle this summer. The submission deadline for Cycle Four projects is April 22. Read more about Back to Bedside, including information for future cycles, on the ACGME website.