Graduate Medical Education

Family medicine residencies: Is one more year needed?

Do family medicine residents need an extra year of training? A pilot study is now under way looking at the benefits and tradeoffs of four years of residency education rather than three.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's (ACGME) Review Committee for Family Medicine is developing a study of 20 to 25 family medicine residency programs over a four-year period, beginning in July.

In a story from the American Academy of Family Physicians, Peter Carek, MD, chair of the review committee, said the project is expected to "serve as a wealth of data and information regarding the optimal methods, curriculum and patient care activities needed in a training program."

Impact of duty-hour rules? More study needed

Despite many studies and academic articles on duty hours and patient safety, researchers have yet to definitively connect resident fatigue with adverse patient outcomes, according to the authors of a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine. Improved, comprehensive research is needed, they contend, on the actual effects of resident and fellow duty-hour limits.

Meanwhile, the ACGME has been hesitant to grant programs duty-hour exemptions for experimentation and research because of the political climate surrounding the issue and the looming threat of federal intervention. The authors of the commentary, however, believe that research exemptions are the only way to produce the quality studies needed to fully understand the impact of duty hours and the best course going forward.

Although a precise analysis of duty hours and their impact on patient outcomes remains elusive, patient safety continues to be a hot topic. The AMA offers resources to help residents navigate patient safety and improve handoffs.

Quotable: Author of "The House of God" looks back

"I realized that I could be helpful to doctors who were going through the brutality of training. And so I began what has turned out to be a 35-year odyssey of speaking out, around the world, about resisting the inhumanity of medical training. The title of my talk is almost always the same: ‘Staying Human in Health Care.' "

Samuel Shem, author of "The House of God," writing in The Atlantic

Register for AHME audio conference: "Building the GME Platform"

The Association for Hospital Medical Education will host an audio conference on building the GME platform at 1 p.m. Eastern time Jan. 22, featuring Lawrence Sanders, MD, MBA, associate professor of medicine and chair, Patient Safety and Quality Workgroup, Morehouse School of Medicine. Register now.

AMA resources for you and your trainees

• View an archive version of our webinar on ways to expand and improve GME.
• Check out our recommendations on strategies to expand funding of GME.
• Get trend data on undergraduate and graduate medical education.
• Help your residents master the ACGME general competency requirements.
• Learn more about patient safety in medical education.
• Get updated information on medical licensure.
• Obtain state-by-state GME data.
• Get an updated copy of our GME glossary (email meded@ama-assn.org with "glossary" in subject line).

For more reading

• AMA medical education and professional ethics Twitter pages
• American Medical News
• Ending Disparities e-Letter