The Pritzker School of Medicine’s 17th annual Medical Education Day on Thursday trained its focus on the transition to from undergraduate medical education to graduate medical education, highlighting innovations, challenges, and opportunities for improvement along the continuum.
Under the theme “Closing the Gap, Strengthening the Bridge through the Continuum of Medical Education,” the annual event featured a keynote address from Alison J. Whelan, MD, Chief Academic Officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). In her lecture, Whelan showcased the AAMC’s efforts to support medical students and residents alike in the journey from learning to be a physician to learning as a physician.
The transition to residency, Whelan showed, is a complex process involving many stakeholders, requiring widespread collaboration. As the focus on the UME to GME transition has grown in recent years, so too has the level of collaboration among those stakeholders to ensure warm, successful handoffs as medical students become residents.
To demonstrate the degree of progress made in this space recently, Whelan shared results of the AAMC’s Resident Readiness Survey, which over several years reflected residency program directors’ belief that 97 percent or more of residents evaluated six months into their first year of residency met or exceeded overall performance expectations.
This year’s Medical Education Day, put on by the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators, opened with a program directors and clerkship directors retreat that gave faculty leaders a chance to explore topics including “How to Create Master Adaptive Learners in UME and GME” and “Remediating the Struggling Learner: UME and GME Cases.” The keynote address followed, featuring a full audience representing the full continuum, from medical students and residents to leaders from UME and GME.
New Fellows and Masters Inducted
As part of Medical Education Day, the Academy inducted five new Fellows of the Academy and two new Master Educators of the Academy.