November 18, 2011 — Dr. Sheldon recently participated in a conference sponsored by the Josiah Macy Foundation, entitled “Ensuring an Effective Physician Workforce for the United States: Recommendations for Graduate Medical Education to Meet the Needs of the Public” that was held in Atlanta, Georgia earlier this year.
The Josiah Marcy Jr. Foundation is dedicated to improving the health of the public by advancing the education and training of health professionals. For more information about the Foundation, please click here.
The five major reforms the conference findings called for are:
- Greater accountability through public representation and public reporting.
- Greater relevant through broadening sites and content of training and requiring interprofessional education.
- Greater efficiency through adopting a competency based approach, and eliminating non educational experiences and redundancies in training.
- Greater flexibility to individualize training for different career goals.
- Greater research based to improve and evaluate training.
Dr. Sheldon is the Zack. D. Owens Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Charter Member of the Council of Graduate Medical Education (COGME) when it was founded in 1985 and has been involved with improving Graduate Medical Education for many years.