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Print the Document Mid-Atlantic Regional
Breakfast Minutes
2007 Spring Meeting Friday, May 4 The APPD Mid-Atlantic Region met for its annual breakfast at the APPD Spring Meeting and focused on three key items for discussion: 1. Regional Implications of R3P: One of the questions posed by the R3P Committee in its March 2007 memorandum to the APPD leadership concerns flexibility of training curricula as well as location to meet the broad career choices of pediatric residents (eg. ambulatory versus hospitalist, large city urban versus rural). With this question in mind, the group discussed the idea of pooling our collective educational resources and clinical experiences as separate programs to meet the needs of individual trainees with specific career goals who might not otherwise have some of these experiences available at their home institution. These experiences would go beyond the one or two away rotations that some programs routinely offer their trainees during their residency schedule, and instead capitalize on more prolonged experiences that could be performed at other institutions within a close geographical area such as our Mid-Atlantic region. The consensus of the group was that at most of our programs, there was already adequate flexibility to meet the overwhelming majority of our trainees’ needs, and that a great deal of our energy as educational managers was already focused towards insuring that their individual training goals were met through their clinical experiences. In addition, longer term administrative issues such as resident reimbursement, malpractice requirements that differ from state to state, and reciprocity of trainees for work schedules, etc. might prove to be prohibitive. 2. Faculty Development Regional Network: This item was discussed briefly at last year’s meeting as well as at the Fall Meeting. With the very explicit language of both the ACGME common program requirements and the R3P project concerning the importance of faculty development, it was agreed that we should embark on developing our own regional network of faculty development expertise that our programs could utilize with hopefully minimal cost and inconvenience. Recognizing that faculty and residents are often more receptive to “outside experts” as opposed to resources within one’s own program (particularly when it comes to seemingly esoteric issues like the ACGME competencies), the consensus of the group was that such a database would be useful for a variety of things like grand rounds, faculty development workshops or seminars, resident/faculty retreats, etc. Dr. Yu agreed to initiate creation of this database after canvassing the Mid-Atlantic regional membership for input to include individual talks, presentations, workshops, and/or tools that people have developed and used in the past. 3. Educational Research Collaborative: There have already been examples within our region of collaborative educational research endeavors; however, it was agreed that pooling our resources in a more organized way would allow for increased validity vis a vis multi-center collaborative studies or projects. Although recognizing the broader efforts of the APPD through such innovations as the Shared Warehouse, it was felt that there would be additional value of developing educational tools within our region for shared use, and perhaps later presentation at such venues like the Spring Meeting for wider dissemination once piloted at our local sites. There were several ideas for projects, including developing our own ILP’s separate from PediaLink, post-graduate survey forms that could be additionally tailored for each institution, direct observation forms for use in multiple educational settings (e.g. clinics, wards, ICU’s), studying the validity of simulation tools, competency self-assessment tools, and developing transition to practice seminars. There was broad interest amongst the group for instituting a steering committee to disseminate project proposals and to oversee participation, with several volunteers to help jumpstart our efforts. In addition to these three topics of discussion, planning for our annual fall meeting was also initiated. It was agreed that the forum we have utilized for the past two conferences at Geisinger Medical Center, ie. “show and tell” from individual programs about innovative activities, followed by a plenary presentation and then break-up into program director/associate program director, program coordinator, and chief resident focus groups in the afternoon, has been well-received. However, two specific suggestions for this upcoming meeting received audience support. The first involved developing a forum for resident research and/or PI projects. Finalists for the competition as determined by our regional research steering committee would present their posters at lunch during the Fall Meeting, with the winner announced at the meeting. The second suggestion was that this year’s meeting be held in the National Capital Area, specifically at the Simulation Center of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) run by Dr. Joe Lopreiato from our region. Both these items will be further developed, with the tentative plan to hold the meeting in September so as not to conflict with the pediatric board exam or the Fall APPD meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 AM. Clifton E. Yu MD, FAAP |