January 6, 2004

Dear House Officer, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Faculty Member,

As you know, the past year brought about a very intensive examination of all aspects of graduate medical education (GME) under the auspices of the graduate medical education committee chaired by Dr. Levi Watkins. As part of that examination, we have developed a Web site in an effort to communicate comprehensively all important information related to GME at Hopkins. You will find links to the important institutional GME policies as well as to the 75 individual training programs which train our approximately 800 residents and fellows at: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/Audience/residents.html and
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/Audience/fellows.html

I also take the opportunity to acknowledge the time and effort of scores of residents, faculty, and administrators who have led the way in not only insuring compliance with ACGME standards, but reaching beyond that toward educational excellence for all trainees. Some of the items accomplished by these individuals under the direction of the GME committee include:

• An internal review of every single training program to guarantee educational excellence and close attention to resident needs
  
• Acceleration of the plan to convert JHH to a filmless digital radiology environment beginning this month in the Emergency Department, which will save residents time and energy in retrieving x-rays
  
• Additional resources allocated to the phlebotomy and patient transport teams to improve resident worklife
  
• An external audit showing all JHM training programs to be in substantial compliance with duty hours rules
  
• Support for school-wide curriculum development and facilities to teach competencies so that residents in every program will have the opportunity for exposure to the best training resources in communication skills, error reduction, ethics, bioinformatics, study design, etc.

I hope you find this Web site useful. It will expand in the coming months. Please send any ideas for improvement in the site to Heather Molnar, hmolnar1@jhmi.edu and to Diane Voss, dvoss@jhmi.edu.

Sincerely,

David G. Nichols, M.D.
Vice Dean for Education