Graduate Medical Education Office Earns Maximum Accreditation

February 6, 2007

NORFOLK—The EVMS Office of Graduate Medical Education that oversees the school’s residency programs received a five-year accreditation, the maximum, from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

While 23 of the residency program must be individually accredited by ACGME committees, the Office of Graduation Medical Education must demonstrate its continuing oversight of all the programs, including detailed monitoring according to ACGME guidelines. Linda Archer, Ph.D., associate dean for graduate medical education, directs the office.

The maximum accreditation resulted from Archer’s “tireless efforts on behalf of residents,” said Frank Counselman, M.D., director of the residency program for the Department of Emergency Medicine. “Five years of full accreditation on our institutional review by the ACGME is a significant achievement … It lets everyone — residents, hospitals, faculty and the public — know that we are in full compliance with the myriad of ACGME policies, requirements and regulations. It is the blue ribbon seal of approval for graduate medical education.”

EVMS residency programs train doctors in a broad range of specialties. EVMS faculty doctors train resident physicians in more than 100 private practices in the region and more than a dozen area hospitals, including all five local Sentara Healthcare facilities, Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, Bon Secours Hampton Roads hospitals, Chesapeake General Hospital, the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Hampton.

The Office of Graduate Medical Education must oversee the 23 ACGME-accredited programs, monitoring each to conform to specialty-specific standards and guidelines in what Archer describes as “mini-ACGME site visits.”

Preparing for the institutional review, which took well over a year “was a major undertaking,” Archer said.

With the recent approval, the Office of Graduation Medical Education will not be up for renewal until 2011.

The following individual EVMS residency programs received accreditation renewals from ACGME during the past calendar year:

• Forensic Pathology
• Ghent Family Practice
• Ophthalmology
• Urology

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