CHICAGO — Expanding on its work to transform the way future physicians are trained, the American Medical Association (AMA) today announced the final eight award recipients that will receive funding as part of its new Reimagining Residency initiative. Aimed at significantly improving residency training, the AMA is awarding $14.4 million to support eight innovation projects led by medical schools, residency programs, and health systems from across the country who have oversight over graduate medical education (GME). These projects will help ensure future physicians are prepared for and safely transition from medical school to residency, develop the skills needed to enhance their readiness for practice, and train in an environment that promotes their well-being.

“After establishing a framework for creating the medical schools of the future, the AMA is now supporting innovation projects that will better align residency training with the evolving needs of patients and communities, as well as the workforce needs of the current and future health care system,” said AMA CEO & Executive Vice President James L. Madara, M.D. “As the health care landscape and technology rapidly evolve, the AMA will continue working with its community of innovation to drive the future of medicine by supporting significant redesign in physician training. Our goal is to ensure physicians are prepared to adapt, grow and thrive at every stage of their training and career. Better prepared physicians will deliver more effective and equitable health care.”

The AMA is providing $1.8 million over 5 years to fund each of the following eight innovation projects aimed at promoting systemic change in residency training. The projects are being sponsored by organizations with oversight of graduate medical education. The organizations will join the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium and work together to evaluate successes and lessons learned, and promote wide dissemination and adoption of successful innovations:

• California Oregon Medical Partnership to Address Disparities in Rural Education and Health (COMPADRE)—Oregon Health & Science University and University of California, Davis
• Fully Integrated Readiness for Service Training (FIRST): Enhancing the Continuum from Medical School to Residency to Practice—University of North Carolina School of Medicine
• NYU Transition to Residency Advantage—NYU School of Medicine
• Promotion in Place: Enhancing Trainee Well-Being and Patient Care Through Time-Variable Graduate Medical Education—Partners HealthCare System, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Reimagining Residency: Ensuring Readiness for Practice Through Growing Interprofessional Partnerships to Advance Care and Education—Maine Medical Center
• Residency Training to Effectively Address Social Determinants of Health: Applying a Curricular Framework Across Four Primary Care Specialties— Montefiore Health System in New York
• The Graduate Medical Training “Laboratory”: An Innovative Program to Generate, Implement and Evaluate Interventions to Improve Resident Burnout and Clinical Skill—Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, and University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine
• The GOL²D Project (Goals of Life and Learning Delineated): Collaboration Across Academic Health Systems to Better Align GME with Learner, Patient and Societal Needs—Vanderbilt University Medical Center and University of Mississippi Medical Center

Some of the projects announced today include curricular innovations that will address workforce shortages and address social determinants of health. Other projects will build upon the innovations and concepts developed and implemented in medical schools over the past six years by the AMA’s consortium. These projects include implementing competency-based programs and incorporating Health Systems Science into residency training. To view the complete list of innovation projects, including project descriptions and sponsoring organizations, visit www.changeresed.org.

The eight projects were selected through a competitive grant process by an advisory panel made up of leading experts in medical education. The projects were selected based upon how well they addressed the aims of the program:  improving the transition from medical school to residency to preserve continuity in professional development, ensuring readiness for practice through modifications of residency curricula, and optimizing the learning environment to support well-being among trainees, mentors, and staff.

In addition to the eight funded Reimagining Residency projects, the AMA is also providing smaller planning grants to help fund the further exploration and development of three additional project proposals that were submitted. The $50,000 planning grants will be used to continue discussions, assemble national stakeholders, and pursue more substantial funding. The project descriptions and sponsoring organizations can be found at www.changeresed.org.

The new AMA Reimagining Residency initiative builds on the work of the AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative launched in 2013 to create the medical schools of the future. The goal of the effort is to address the growing gap between how physicians are being trained and the skills they’ll need to practice in modern health systems. The AMA will continue its efforts to drive the future of medicine by reimagining medical education, training and lifelong learning—ensuring physicians are better equipped to provide care in the rapidly-evolving health care environment.

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