Aims

Guidelines for developing Aims

Aims statements are the most crucial element.

• These provide a big-picture view
• Everything else is viewed through the lens of Aims

Gather information from stakeholders.

• Residents
• Medical students
• Hospital leadership
• Nurses

Find out key expectations of the program (specific)

• Aims show intentionality in program design. ACGME will ask:
  • How is your program different from other programs in the same specialty?
  • What types of trainees, training for particular careers or populations do you serve?
  • Is your program congruent with the Aims?

Questions

A.   Who are we currently?

• Who do we train?
• What do they do after completion?
• What constitutes the community of patients for whom we provide care?

B.  Who do we want to be?

• What are the characteristics of the applicants we would like to recruit?
• Who do we want to train and for what career paths?

C.  How do we get there?

• What are we doing that currently would advance our Aims?
• What do we need to be doing to advance our Aims?
• What additional resources, if any, do we need to advance our Aims?
• What stakeholders need to be invited to assist?

Examples of Aims

These may be related to advocacy, clinical/quality/safety, career choice, etc.

A.   Provide residents with a well-rounded, comprehensive, three-year curriculum that will instill the fundamentals to pursue any career path (within the scope of internal medicine) they choose. This includes exposure to the multitude of subspecialty and practice varieties available to the internist while not sacrificing a comprehensive/intensive experience managing the acute and chronic diseases commonly encountered by the general internist.

B.   Educate residents in population health and QI so that they may become change leaders in their future practices. This includes exposure to and opportunity to participate in patient safety, QI and resource management/cost conscious care initiatives.

C.   Encourage development of procedural competence through the use of simulation and bedside ultrasound as well as through opportunities to perform procedures in real time.

D.   Foster a commitment to advocacy for the advancement of child health priorities at the local, national and/or international level.

E.   Provide excellent general pediatricians training for a diverse group of residents who will be confident in their abilities to care for infants, children, adolescents and young adults upon completion.

F.    Produce excellent, independent practitioners who will be local and national leaders in their clinical and academic careers.

G.   Provide a comprehensive three-year curriculum to enable residents to learn tertiary, secondary and primary care skills in all settings.

H.   Educate residents to be excellent practitioners of medically-directed anesthesiology in an anesthesia care team model.

I.    Train physicians with expertise in population health and servicing medically underserved areas.