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Midwest Regional Breakfast Minutes
Spring Meeting 2008

April 30, 2008

The APPD Midwest Region met on two occasions in conjunction with the 2008 APPD Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. On April 30, 2008, approximately 25 members of the region attended a session which consisted of three presentations followed by discussion. Topics for the presentations were chosen after surveying the regional membership. Keith Mann, MD, Associate Program Director at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Children’s Mercy Hospital, gave a presentation entitled “Encouraging Resident Self-Directed Learning: Lessons Learned from the ILP.” Many of us have been finding it increasingly challenging to help our residents to be consistently self-directed, and Keith’s insight and thoughts regarding how to approach this issue were extremely helpful and generated a significant amount of discussion. Jay Nocton, MD, Program Director at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, discussed “The Other RRC (Ranking Resident Candidates): A Scoring System for Efficiently Creating a Rank List.” The approach that one program uses to identify the critical elements of the application, the relative weighting of these elements, and the generation of a rank list were discussed. There was interesting discussion following the presentation regarding which elements should be considered and how they should be weighted, with some considerable differences among programs. It was agreed that more formal study of the predictors of success (or failure) during residency might be very helpful for all of us, and might be a topic for a collaborative study among multiple programs. Finally, Tara Shirley, Program Coordinator at the University of Kansas-Wichita, presented “Resident Recruitment: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Tara discussed some recruitment events sponsored by her program, including what has been helpful, and what has not seemed to be as helpful. Tara’s presentation generated significant sharing among the attendees regarding recruitment ideas.

At the Midwest Regional Breakfast, attendance was impressive, with approximately 50 members present. Our region decided to add the position of Associate Program Director Co-Chair, and earlier this year an election was held. Keith Mann, MD, Associate Program Director at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was introduced as our region’s first Associate Program Director Co-Chair. At the instruction of APPD leadership, the potential benefits of focused executive-type training for program directors were discussed. It was agreed that such a course would be beneficial. The optimal format for such a course was felt to be an initial short course followed by longitudinal coursework, likely with web-based modules, to improve sustainability. The membership also discussed goals for our region, including how best to move forward toward developing collaborative innovative and educational research projects. There was a consensus that having an additional meeting within our region in the fall would be helpful, and we are therefore exploring the feasibility of holding a fall regional face-to-face meeting for program directors, coordinators, and possibly chief residents. The agenda for this meeting would likely include sharing current curricular ideas and topics, as we have done with previous teleconferences and meetings, as well as presentation and discussion of potential innovative and research collaboratives. We all look forward to continuing to share ideas and hopefully develop some collaborative initiatives.
Respectfully submitted,

Jay Nocton, MD
Chair, APPD Midwest Region
Program Director, Medical College of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, WI



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