August 25, 2010
To My Fellow Program Directors,
The AFMRD Board is always interested in our members’ opinions. If you were at PDW in June, you had the opportunity to hear the ACGME’s perspective directly from Dr. Thomas Nasca, the Executive Director and CEO of the ACGME, on resident duty hours. The AFMRD Board also met with Dr. Nasca to share program directors’ perspectives concerning existing duty hour rules, as well as concerns about the potential new rules that were to be released several weeks later.
On June 23, the ACGME released the proposed duty hours revisions. AFMRD then deployed a survey to all program directors requesting your opinions on the proposed duty hour revisions. Because of the very short public comment period we had limited time to compose and distribute a survey, then collect and report your responses to the “family of family medicine” for a joint letter from our discipline. Despite it being a short survey window, in the summer, with busy program directors orienting new residents, assisting other residents in new roles, and hopefully getting some well-deserved (and needed!) vacation time, we received 220 responses, close to 50% of all programs. Many thanks to all AFMRD members who responded; your instrumental input was considered carefully and incorporated into our response to the ACGME’s invitation for the family medicine organizations to provide comment. To view the letter sent to the ACGME, click here.
The 220 responses were representative of our entire membership’s programs - 39% urban, 38% suburban, 15% rural, and 8% inner-city. Likewise, the distribution of our survey’s respondents reflected the distribution of our membership relating to sponsoring institution type, single residency/multi-residency institution, and program size. So, given the time constraints, we did pretty well in getting a representative sample of our organization’s members.
The comments provided were highly descriptive, passionate, and sometimes even colorful. These comments helped inform our Board in providing feedback to the ACGME that mere Likert scale responses could not provide! To view more detail about the results, click here.
The comments provided were highly descriptive, passionate, and sometimes even colorful. These comments helped inform our Board in providing feedback to the ACGME that mere Likert scale responses could not provide! To view more detail about the results, click here.
The AFMRD will continue to work closely with our members and other stakeholders to communicate with the ACGME on this issue as the process moves forward.
Thank you for your membership and continued commitment to your residents, patients, and communities.
Joe Gravel, MD, President
Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors
Joe Gravel, MD, President
Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors