The ACR will Facilitate the Recruitment, Training and Retention of Well-Qualified Rheumatology Professionals.
Promoting Rheumatology as a Specialty
In order to attract the best and brightest to the field of rheumatology, the ACR continued promotion of its Choose Rheumatology campaign, including an outreach program at the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, targeted mailings to medical schools and partnering with the Rheumatology Research Foundation through their preceptorship program. Forty-one students participated in this year's outreach program at the annual meeting, where they heard from leaders in the field about why rheumatology is the happiest specialty.
The ACR also developed and published a diversity and inclusion statement to demonstrate its commitment to creating an inclusive environment within rheumatology.
The Lupus Initiative promotes rheumatology through educational outreach to providers in primary care. By offering a variety of free resources designed to improve disease recognition and diagnosis by frontline providers, its aim is to encourage timely referrals to rheumatologists. To that end, The Lupus Initiative exhibited at annual scientific meetings of the National Medical Association and the Association of American Indian Physicians – professional/affinity groups representing providers who treat two of the populations disproportionately impacted by lupus.
Helping Fellows-in-Training Navigate Their Career Paths
The ACR and the National Board of Medical Examiners continued their partnership to provide the fourth annual Adult In-Training Exam in March 2012. The exam consisted of 200 questions in eight content areas, and was administered to 409 fellows-in-training.
The ACR's Lupus Initiative partnered with the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley University to develop an interactive online case study program entitled, PIVOT (Practice Improvement using Virtual Online Training). PIVOT is being created to offer students and practitioners an opportunity to simulate variations in patient outcomes based on their unique treatment decisions. The cases will be launched in spring 2013.
With a continued focus on providing meaningful educational opportunities for rheumatology fellows-in-training, the ACR offered an educational program at its 2012 State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium, held April 27th in Chicago. The day-long program provided 105 fellows-in-training an additional educational opportunity to meet their specific needs. This program also provides fellows-in-training with scholarships to attend the meeting through the ACR Fellows Education Fund.
Finally, with funding provided by the ACR Fellows Education Fund, 427 adult and pediatric rheumatology fellows-in-training from 150 programs were able to attend the 2012 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. While at the meeting, these participants had the opportunity to participate in a number of sessions that were designed with them in mind.
Meeting the Needs of Academic Rheumatology
The ACR remains committed to matching fellows-in-training with training programs to ensure a well-prepared future workforce. In 2012, the ACR continued to match fellows-in-training with these programs through the Electronic Fellowship Application/Rheumatology Match. The vast majority of rheumatology training programs successfully used ERAS and the rheumatology match for the seventh year to fill their 2013 first-year positions.
The ACR also held its 14th annual Training Directors' Conference on March 23 – 24, 2012 in Chicago. The conference is designed to provide rheumatology training directors' access to valuable resources while exposing them to innovative teaching methods that will enable them to improve and strengthen their curriculum. The 2012 conference offered educational sessions, case-based presentations and interactive workshops with experts. A total of 107 attendees participated in the conference, with 84 percent representing adult rheumatology programs and 16 percent representing pediatric rheumatology programs. Seventy-five percent of attendees reported they will change the way they instruct fellows as a result of their participation in this important conference.
The ACR also held Training Directors' and Division Chief's Forums in conjunction with the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. These programs provide updates to program directors and division chiefs regarding resources available to them and important information with respect to their important work in training the next generation of rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals.