FEATURE

Two Baystate Residency Programs Selected as Beta Test Sites for ACGME Learning Portfolio

The Obstetrics & Gynecology and Medicine Residencies Will Start in Early 2008

Developed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) as a natural progression of its Outcome Project, the learning portfolio is an interactive, web-based tool that supports resident learning, evaluation, and professional development.

Alpha testing of the learning portfolio started in August 2007 with a very small number of programs and specialties. For its beta test phase, the ACGME has sought a larger number of core programs (those admitting directly from medical school or after a preliminary year) to work together by specialty with the goals of:

• developing portfolio components to meet unique specialty needs, and identifying specialty-specific measure for outcomes and evaluation tools.

• testing and assessing the stability and usability of the beta-prototype portfolio in a variety of learning environments.

Both residents and Program Directors can benefit from the learning portfolio. Residents can use portfolios to track their learning experiences, share insights and receive feedback on their skills as physicians, building evidence that allows them to chart their own progress over time.

The learning portfolio offers Program Directors the opportunity for honest and integrative dialog between residents and faculty about progress and to identify learning needs. It also reduces the burden of documentation for RRC review and accreditation.

ACGME anticipates that the portfolio will allow significant strides to be made towards building a national database that can be used by programs to examine outcomes, review differences between programs, and seek information to support changes to ultimately improve the field of residency education.

It is anticipated that the portfolio will be available for voluntary, broader-based use in 2010.