2020 ACGME David C. Leach Awardee Marjon Vatanchi, MD is an assistant professor and director of nail surgery and special procedures at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Annual Educational Conference not only facilitates great collegiality and networking, but also allows you to connect with ACGME leaders and staff members, to get detailed answers to your questions or simply to put a face with an email address.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Lead Awardee John Patrick T. Co, MD, MPH is the designated institutional official at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Awardee Lisa Willett, MD, MACM, is the internal medicine residency program director and vice chair for education in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Debra L. Dooley came to the ACGME 22 years ago, initially in an administrative role with the Review Committee for Internal Medicine. She retires today, after 10.5 years as the Director of Educational Activities, where she leads the team responsible for producing the ACGME’s educational programming, and most notably the Annual Educational Conference. We spent some time with her before she left, discussing her career, her mentors, her legacy, and the renaming of the Debra L. Dooley Program Coordinator Excellence Award.

Sumbit a Call for Abstracts for the 2026 Annual Educational Conference; participate in surveys to inform the revisions of ACGME Requirements in a variety of specialties/subspecialties; and participate in the Clinician Educator Journal Club. 

If you were working in GME back in the 80s, maybe you attended one of the ACGME’s early forerunners of the Annual Educational Conference.

Linda B. Andrews, MD joined the ACGME leadership team in February 2019 as the new Senior Vice President, Field Activities. We chatted with Dr. Andrews to learn more about her background and her vision for Field Activities at the ACGME.

In one of the final sessions at the 2018 Annual Educational Conference on Sunday, March 4, a panel of ACGME executives, deans, a patient safety expert, and a resident spoke to the crowd about how medicine is changing and graduate medical education may need to evolve to serve patients well into the 21^st century.

ACGME President and CEO Dr. Nasca kicked off his Saturday morning session at the Annual Educational Conference with some “non-rhetorical” questions: Can anyone predict what the health care system will look like in 2035? Can anyone predict how long your residents will practice? 40 years?

After stumping the room, he went on to explain that it is our job is to prepare residents to practice in the future—not to arm them with practices, skills, and knowledge of the present. We want our residents to be prepared not just for 2018 but for 2035—and beyond.