ACGME Reviews Its Institutional Requirements FREE

A recent petition by resident physicians to the National Labor Relations Board¹ has raised the question, how well are resident physicians represented in their residency programs? In response, the American Medical Association (AMA) asked the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to address this issue. Last week's Resident Forum column discussed the ACGME's recent adoption of a "rapid response mechanism" to deal with alleged egregious accreditation violations by residency programs. The ACGME has also been reviewing its institutional requirements, which contains the standards that each institution must meet in order to sponsor graduate medical education (GME) programs.

The ACGME delegated consideration of this issue to its Institutional Review Committee (IRC), which is charged with the review of institutions sponsoring GME programs. The institutional requirements covers matters such as institutional commitment to provide organizational and financial support for GME; the composition and responsibilities of the institution's GME Committee, which oversees all aspects of GME, including creation and review of all GME policies and procedures and internal review of residency programs; quality assurance activities; resident participation in education activities; resident financial support, benefits and conditions of employment; and resident supervision, duty hours, and work environment.

After considerable deliberation, the IRC proposed the following revisions to the institutional requirements:

These proposed revisions will be voted on at the ACGME's June meeting and, if approved, will become effective July 1, 1998. We anticipate that the revised requirements will encourage greater dialogue and resident involvement with officials and faculty at their training institutions regarding patient care and resident well-being. The AMA will continue to report on these matters as they develop.