Streamline your administrative structure
Our clerkship coordinator just returned home from last week’s Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine meetings in Florida. She’s brand new to this position and was full of all sorts of insight to share with us!
The most startling revelation to her was how fragmented the arms of medical education were at many other institutions. In many places, there are clerkship coordinators, residency coordinators, and fellowship coordinators. All three types of coordinators have a hand in GME, but none of them talk to each other or compare notes. They operate in silos.
This lack of communication is further exacerbated by the fact many clerkship and fellowship coordinators are only part time. Even if each fellowship program has its own coordinator, he or she only spends 25% or 50% of their time working on program-related duties. Their job structure doesn’t provide them time to really get their hands dirty learning the ins and outs of the program, identify problems, and implement solutions.
Over the past few years, we’ve been moving away from this structure. We’re slowly transitioning towards a closer and more collaborative team of administrative staff in our internal medicine department.
The way I see it, medical education is a continuum within any department. From the 3rd year clerkship students to the graduating fellows, the goal for each branch is providing excellence in training while maintaining compliance with accreditation requirements.
This can only be accomplished when all the coordinators sit down in one room and share ideas, successes, and failures with one another. It allows everyone to capitalize on their colleagues’ experiences. The pros are numerable and include:
- Process simplification and improvement
- Back-up and cross cover
- Strategic planning
- Camaraderie
- Increased sense of hand-off (from student to resident, resident to fellow)
- Greater depth of process understanding
- Greater customer service (for trainees and faculty)
- Innovation
The cons are the fact that no one likes change, and as we shift positions around, some people do not want to share administrative resources.
So far, the pros clearly outweigh the cons, but as I mentioned, this is a work-in-progress for us here. I’ll have to save the full report for a little further down the road.
What innovative things are you doing in your programs to facilitate communication across coordinators?
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Diane Farineau
Diane W. Farineau is the director of administration for graduate medical educational and faculty affairs at the University of Virginia Health System in the Department of Medicine.
Diane has written 35 posts.
Comments
Dr. Musich, our Vice President and Director of Medical Education at Beaumont Hospitals, meets each month with all of our program coordinators(34)that include our program coordinators from Royal Oak, Troy & Grosse Pointe. Its a great way to discuss issues/problems that anyone might have and get feedback from others in the same position.
Our DIO also meets monthly with all the program coordinators, which is great. But in the short time I have been here, I have not seen much collaboration between coordinators. For example, there has been no communication from one department to another regarding couples match candidates. I took the initiative and emailed the respective coordinators to let them know which candidates we were seriously looking and to let us know if they planned on interviewing their significant other. So far, the response has been positive.
Our GME office holds monthly Coordinator meetings…these are held the day after the Graduate Medical Education Committee meets. In addition, we host a yearly Residency Coordinator Retreat. The topics for 2008 were: Updates on New Innovations, Screening Applicants (visa issues), Recruitment: Best Practices and Surviving a Site Visit. These meeting are held at 1:00 and lunch is served.
Our institution has had Coordinator Council for five years. We meet each month for discussion, training and sharing of best practices on a variety of issues. This close interation on a regular basis has enabled us to work closely together on couples match, as well as sensitivity of couples issues once they are here (rotation assigments, call schedules, vacation,etc.) The Director of Education and GME staff are there each month. The Dean and DIO join us for focused discussion a couple times a year.
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