Residency

Tip of the week: Document discrepancies in residents? workloads

Residency Program Connection, November 8, 2011

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Residents need to achieve the minimum of any number of procedures specified by the ACGME review committee (RC). But in addition, programs need to provide “balanced” experiences for everyone in the program. For example, the RC may issue your program a citation if there are wide variations in how many procedures your residents perform, even if all of them exceed the minimum number required.

Make sure there are educational justifications for any discrepancy. There should be evidence that resident performance is reviewed in an ongoing manner—at the very least during the twice-yearly meetings between the program director and the resident. However, the annual review is always a good time to methodically review the procedure numbers of all of your trainees to make certain there is balance, or, if there’s a discrepancy, to develop a plan to address it. Perhaps there are reasons for unbalanced experiences. One resident may be less confident, another less competent, and another may want to make a particular area of focus his or her future practice. Any of these reasons may justify why these residents acquired more or fewer procedures. The key is to document these reasons.

This week’s tip is from Insider’s Guide to the ACGME Site Visit by Kathryn Andolsek, MD, MPH, and Shepard Cohen.



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