Changes to the ACGME Common Program Requirements and Their Potential Impact on Emergency Medicine Core Faculty...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Emergency Medicine Training

Background:

• The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) revised Common Program Requirements for US residency and fellowship training.
• Recent revisions removed the mandatory protected time for core faculty, impacting emergency medicine (EM) programs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the effects of revised ACGME requirements on EM core faculty and physician training.
• To examine the role of protected time for faculty in academic EM.

Main Methods:

• Convened national EM stakeholders to review literature and survey data.
• Analyzed the impact of removing protected faculty time on academic missions.

Main Results:

• Faculty nonclinical activities, including education and research, are crucial for academic EM.
• Loss of protected time is expected to negatively affect EM training programs and the specialty.

Conclusions:

• Maintaining protected time for core faculty is essential for academic EM.
• Recommendations are provided for clinical work hour limitations to preserve protected time for education and scholarship.