Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has launched a new shared learning collaborative as part of its larger Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) initiative. The collaboration, called Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments, aims to improve teaching practices and patient care in the hospitals, medical centers, and ambulatory care sites where residents and fellows pursue their formal clinical training in a specialty or subspecialty. The Pursuing Excellence Initiative (PEI) builds on the 2015 report of findings of the CLER program. These findings demonstrate variability across the nation's teaching hospitals in addressing 6 key focus areas. PEI sets up a shared system of collaborative learning among participating sites of ACGME-accredited institutions, in which early participants share advances that will be disseminated through an expanding circle of other participants. The ACGME will award funding to encourage participation in the first major component of PEI. The goal is to stimulate high-leverage changes that will broadly improve patient care and clinical learning environments across the nation.