Dear GME Community,
Cindy Hamra Associate Dean, GME
Happy new year! There are lots of reasons to celebrate this month including Dr. Byron Joyner, our Vice Dean and DIO receiving the 2024 Presidential Citation from the American Urological Association, and Dr. Claire Oduwo, Psychiatry resident, receiving the UW Medicine Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award in 2024.
Please plan ahead for Thank a Resident Day, which will be Friday February 23rd. Thank a Resident Day is sponsored by the Gold Humanism Honor Society and takes place each year to collectively show gratitude and appreciation for residents and how integral they are to the healthcare team. We’re planning GME Outreach events and encourage programs and departments to plan to celebrate as well!
Please remember that the UW Medicine Bias Reporting Tool is a place to share incidents of bias including racism, sexism, ableism, discrimination of any form or other behaviors that do not reflect the prioritization of inclusion and equity expected in all areas of our community. The GME Concern Reporting tool is also available to members of the GME community to report concerns about the learning environment.
Cindy
Policies and Processes
- Residency and Fellowship Position Appointment (RFPA) Agreement for 2024-2025: the AY25 RFPA was approved by GMEC on January 11 and is now available on the Policies and Procedures, Current Residents and Fellows, and Prospective Residents and Fellows pages of the GME website. A communication about the updated agreement was sent to current residents, fellows, program directors and program administrators on January 16. Programs currently interviewing candidates for the 2024-2025 academic year must provide candidates with a copy of the updated agreement.
- The GMEC approved revisions to the following policies at the January meeting. All are posted on the Policies and Procedures page of the GME website.
- Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Registration Policy: Minor updates were made to the DEA Registration Policy including adding a Purpose statement and updating the attestation requirement for opioid management training, which was communicated to programs in May 2023.
- Resident and Fellow Evaluation Policy: Has been revised to include non-ACGME fellowships and NST programs. A new Definitions section has been added, and the Policy section reorganized to clarify PD responsibilities and evaluation processes. Significant updates were made to the Semiannual and End of Year Evaluation sections, with a specific focus on NST trainees. The Resident Evaluation Management and Access section was renamed and updated, and outdated guidelines were removed from the attachments.
- A reminder that residents and fellows are essential personnel who are expected to report for duty; please see guidance from Residency and Fellowship Position Appointment (RFPA) Agreement 2023-2024 and Executive Order 27: Suspended Operations Policy
Program Information
- The ACGME has a weekly e-Communication. If you wish to receive it, email ACGMECommunications@acgme.org.
Events of Interest
- GME Lunch & Learns
- We are excited to announce a comprehensive Four-Part Leadership Lecture Series designed specifically for residents and fellows! Each month, we will delve into crucial areas that shape effective leadership in the medical profession, presented by experts in the field. Mark your calendars and join us! Registration will open in February. Please see the January 18 email from Jennifer Best for more information.
- Navigating Parental Leave for Resident & Fellow Physicians will be Tuesday, February 6th from 6:30-7:30pm via Zoom. Please see the agenda. Register at: https://sites.uw.edu/uwgme/event-registration/. Registration closes February 2. If you can’t make it, a recording will be posted to the Housestaff Events webpage.
- Registration for the ACGME Meaning in Medicine 2024 Annual Education Conference is open! The conference is in Orlando, FL March 7-9, 2024. Support for meeting attendance is ensured by the clinical chair in every new Program Director Appointment Letter.
- The UWSOM is sponsoring the 2024 Graduate Medical Education (GME) Summit. The focus will be collaborating to address workforce needs within the WWAMI region and beyond. Registration for the Summit is now open! Join us on April 25-26, 2024, in Anchorage, Alaska.
- Please save the date(s)! The GME Office is pleased to invite program leadership (PDs, APDs, PAs) to participate in GME’s 2024 Educational Series: Cultivating Skills in Feedback and Critical Conversations. See 11/9 email from Cindy Hamra for more information.
- Other GME Events can be found on our calendar.
Projects and Resources
Please review the GME Annual Program Timeline for important dates for the months of January and February including: Milestones mid-year reporting, semi-annual Procedures Certification entry in MedHub, ACGME Annual Survey preparation, SF Match registration (for applicable programs), and kickoff of activities for the annual onboarding season.- Washington State Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML) premium rates will decrease for UW personnel whose work is performed in the state of Washington. More specifically, the premium rate for the PFML program will decrease from 0.8% to 0.74% of your gross wages up to $168,600 of taxable income. This is paired with a change in the employee–employer split for PFML, with the employee’s contribution decreasing to 71.43%. These changes will be reflected in your January 10, 2024, paycheck. To calculate your 2024 PFML premium contribution and to learn more about PFML benefits, please visit wa.gov. More information about the premium update can be found at https://paidleave.wa.gov/updates/.
- 2025 ACGME Awards: Nomination materials are available on each award’s page in the Awards section of the ACGME website. All nominations are due March 27, 2024. Please reach out to the GME office if you plan to submit an application.
- The ACGME’s Back to Bedside initiative is designed to empower residents and fellows to develop transformative projects that foster meaning and joy in work and allow them to engage on a deeper level with what is at the heart of medicine: their patients. This initiative supports resident- and fellow-directed innovations. Proposals are due by April 22, 2024. Learn More
- Our GME PLA team is hoping to make strides in communication and improving the process for our community in several ways:
- We created a new, simplified introduction video for the PLA process as a whole here.
- We want to make sure the barriers to completing a rotation request or PLA are as low as possible. If you could please fill out the linked survey and provide feedback it would be helpful and allow us to improve the process.
- Please review the email from Chris Gibson sent on 12/19 for data on expiring PLAs.
- Please review “Access to UW Medicine Care for Employees” from The Huddle for information about help for UW Medicine employees and their families to gain better access to UW Medicine facilities and providers.
- The UW Office of Global Affairs is excited to announce that effective January 1, 2024, all UW faculty, staff and other academic personnel who are traveling overseas on official UW business will now be covered by an international emergency medical and security insurance policy. This coverage is provided at no cost to the traveler and differs from the current coverage in that it includes emergency medical benefits.
- The GME Office is supporting a new project called the Names & Pronunciations Initiative, which aims to not only highlight the importance of name pronunciations, but also improve communication by providing physical badges (for those who want one) which include users’ written phonetic name pronunciation. Anyone interested in learning more about the project or who wants to order a pronunciation badge can do so here: https://www.names-pronunciations-initiative.com/. If you receive a badge for someone not in your program or if you have any questions, please email the project lead, Sudiptho (UW MS4) at sudiptho@uw.edu.
People
- A team at UW Medicine has created the Multidisciplinary Thoracic Aortic Program (MTAP) to provide holistic, team-based care for complex aortic disease. With a team of cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, clinic staff, genetic counselors, medical geneticists and vascular surgeons, the MTAP team discusses 250 to 300 patient cases annually. Team members from the Department of Medicine include Catherine Otto (professor), Yonatan Buber (Adult Congenital Heart Disease Associate Program Director), James Kirkpatrick (Advanced Cardiac Imaging Program Director), and Peter Byers (professor). Read the full story from The Huddle.
- Justin Bullock, fellow, Nephrology, is senior author of “The Next Era of Assessment: Can Ensuring High-Quality, Equitable Patient Care Be the Defining Characteristic?” in Academic Medicine.
- Sarah Gunby, fellow, is lead author, and Lisa Strate, professor, Gastroenterology, is senior author of “Smoking and alcohol consumption and risk of incident diverticulitis in women” in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
- Vishesh Kapur, Sleep Medicine Program Director, is quoted in “No more ‘spring forward’ if new bill passes WA state legislature” from KIRO.
- Leo Morales, Assistant Dean for Healthcare Equity and Quality, is quoted in “What Recovery?” in Palabra. He is also quoted in “Long COVID’s deep impact on Latinos” from The Oregonian.
- Emily Myers, Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Program Director, is quoted in “Screen time for kids under 2 linked to sensory differences in toddlerhood” from ABC News.
- Sarah Prager, Complex Family Planning Program Director, is quoted in “Umbilical Cord Blood Transplant Saved Woman From Rare Cancer” from The Huddle.
- Namrata Singh, Rheumatology Associate Program Director, is lead author of “Frailty and risk of serious infections in patients with rheumatoid arthritis treated with biologic or targeted-synthetic DMARDs” in Arthritis Care & Research. She is also quoted in “Frailty Worsens Side Effects of Rheumatoid Arthritis Treatment” in MedPage Today.
- Crystal Brown, assistant professor, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, is lead author and Bessie Young, Vice Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, is senior author of “Discriminatory healthcare experiences and medical mistrust in patients with serious illness” in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Department of Medicine co-author is Kristine Cueva.
- Sharing news about our trainees: two of UW Medicine’s Top 10 Huddle Stories of 2023 were about trainees (Get to Know Our Chief Residents and Fellows & Volunteer-Led Virtual Bedside Concert Program Thrives)!
- Check out the Otolaryngology Head and Neck – Winter 2023 Newsletter for trainee features and faculty highlights.