O. S. Eng1, R. A. Nelson1, V. Sun1, L. L. Lai1, K. A. Melstrom1 1City Of Hope National Medical Center,Duarte, CA, USA
Introduction:
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) implemented the Milestones Project in 2013 to provide specialty-specific objectives in evaluation of trainee performance. We hypothesized that CGSO milestones would be better understood with an educational session. We sought to assess the understanding of Complex General Surgical Oncology (CGSO) Fellowship milestones among trainees and faculty.
Methods:
Two surveys were conducted among trainees and faculty members which entailed matching learning objectives with CGSO-specific milestones, one before and one after an interactive educational session. Learning objectives and milestone wording were taken verbatim from ACGME report worksheets.
Results:
Ten trainees and eleven faculty members participated in the study. While the majority of participants had experience with ACGME Milestones previously, <30% reported having received a formal explanation of the milestones. Overall, trainees and faculty were able to correctly identify learning objectives with CGSO milestones 47% and 53% of the time, respectively, before the educational session and 50% and 51%, respectively, after the session. After the educational session, trainees and faculty changed 14% and 13% of answers, respectively, from incorrect to correct. However, the trainees and faculty also changed 11% and 15% of answers, respectively, from correct to incorrect.
Conclusion:
Better baseline understanding of ACGME Milestones among trainees and faculty is needed. A one-time educational session is not sufficient in affecting the understanding of ACGME Milestones since understanding of individual milestones did not improve after the educational session. Development of strategies for improving our understanding is important, given that the foundation of the ACGME curricula is based on specialty-specific milestones.