AAMC policy guidance on graduate medical education: assuring quality patient care and quality education.

This document, approved by the executive council of the Association of American Medical Colleges at its September 2001 meeting, provides policy guidance on the four key issues requiring attention by teaching hospitals, medical schools, and leaders and faculty of graduate medical education (GME) programs: (1) institutional oversight and program support; (2) the educational program; (3) supervision of residents in patient care; and (4) residents' duty hours. These issues require urgent attention by the academic community. The quality of residents' education and the well-being of residents themselves are among academic medicine's most solemn professional obligations. Persistent calls for reforming GME to better meet these obligations must be heeded, not because government regulation is the likely alternative if they are not, but because it is the right thing to do. Implementing the guidelines will require many sponsoring institutions and individual training programs to allocate additional resources to their GME missions, which will pose a major challenge to many, partly because many payers of patient care services are reluctant to assume their fair share of GME costs and also because there are regulatory constraints that affect GME within current public programs. Sponsors of GME programs should find these policy guidelines helpful in setting priorities for the expenditure of existing resources.