Illuminating Graduate Medical Education Outcomes in Order to Improve Them

Optimizing clinician education is an essential step toward enhancing health outcomes, and graduate medical education (GME)-as the pipeline for producing the nation's physicians-is an appropriate target for improvement. This Invited Commentary focuses on the need to clarify the specific goals of GME and measure achievement of those goals, using consistent metrics. The authors report on an October 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) workshop focused on this agenda. A broadly representative group of participants reflected strong consensus in support of using GME outcomes data to develop better approaches to education and related policy. Implementation challenges include identifying meaningful metrics, minimizing administrative burden, addressing privacy concerns, and recognizing variability in institutional mission and capabilities. The authors recommend creating a national inventory of current data sources and initiating a pilot program to collect and share common metrics, while advancing a national effort via a "neutral" convener, such as the NASEM. The authors assert that measuring and reporting GME outcomes is a professional responsibility that must now be tackled.