EB: What do you see as the main goal of SGIM’s Education Committee?
DJ/RB: The goal of the Education Committee is to identify and respond to the needs of clinician-educators at all levels of their careers. This goal is a critical part of SGIM’s mission because SGIM members are at the forefront of educating medical students, residents and fellows at academic medical centers and teaching hospitals.
EB: What are the top priorities of the Education Committee in the coming year?
DJ/RB: The first priority of the Committee is to resume full operation of the TEACH (Teaching Educators Across the Continuum of Healthcare) program that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed by the Committee to address the needs of junior clinician-educators, the program offers quality instruction in teaching skills.1 Participants can earn a master teacher certificate in one year by attending two consecutive annual meetings and completing online work and teaching observations at their home institutions. In the program, participants create an interactive teaching portfolio to document their teaching performance with reflections on strengths and weaknesses. Participants also gain life-long access to a community of medical educators.
The second priority is to represent SGIM’s membership in weighing in on major educational policy issues. This priority has become an increasingly valuable role of the Committee as SGIM is asked more and more to contribute to deliberations about educational policy at a national level. Last year, for example, Committee members represented SGIM on the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine’s Internal Medicine Education Advisory Board and the National Board of Medical Examiners’ new growth and innovations unit. The Committee submitted comments to the American Board of Medical Specialties on continued certification draft standards and to the Coalition for Physician Accountability’s Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) to Graduate Medical Education (GME) Review Committee on how to improve the UME-GME transition. The Committee also published an article in JGIM that outlines educational needs and emerging areas for faculty development in telehealth teaching and assessment of telehealth competencies.2 The article is valuable to educational policy makers because it proposes strategies for addressing the telehealth competencies defined by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the related educational milestones defined by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
A third priority is to continue sponsoring national awards that recognize outstanding clinician-educators whose scholarly contributions have had a national impact on the art and science of medicine and medical education. The awards include: the National Award for Career Achievements in Medical Education, the National Award for Scholarship in Medical Education, and the National Award for Mid-Career Education Mentorship. Past recipients of the awards are listed in the table, a “who’s who list” of clinician-educators in general internal medicine. [List of Past Recipients of SGIM’s National Awards for Clinician-Educators]
Finally, the Committee will continue to give attention to how it can help SGIM create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive professional home for our members while integrating anti-racism work on educational policies and practices that could otherwise perpetuate historical and ongoing injustices. The anti-racism work will build on the symposium that the Committee put together for the SGIM Annual Meeting in 2021 and that led to a perspective article in JGIM.3