The ACGME Releases Version 3.0 of CLER Pathways to Excellence
May 21 2024 - 10:35AM
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME),
through its Clinical Environment Review (CLER) Program, is pleased
to announce the publication of Version 3.0 of the CLER
Pathways to Excellence: Expectations for an Optimal Clinical
Learning Environment to Achieve Safe and High-Quality Patient Care.
Version 3.0 was announced at the 2024 ACGME Annual Educational
Conference in March in Orlando, Florida.
The CLER Pathways document serves as a tool to promote
discussions and actions to optimize the clinical learning
environment. The document frames pathways and properties in the six
CLER Focus Areas of Patient Safety; Health Care Quality; Teaming;
Well-Being; Professionalism; and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
(DEI), a new Focus Area that recognizes diverse, equitable, and
inclusive clinical learning environments are essential to improve
patient and learner experiences and achieve equity in health
care.
The DEI Focus Area includes five pathways for the clinical
learning environment to:
- ensure DEI across the clinical care team to optimize learning
and patient care;
- create and maintain interprofessional education and training
and facilitate learning on DEI;
- maintain the necessary support systems to ensure DEI;
- create and maintain diversity among the clinical care team to
optimize learning and patient care; and,
- monitor the effectiveness and outcomes of its efforts to
integrate and achieve DEI.
“The ACGME is very pleased to present this latest version of the
CLER Pathways to Excellence,” said ACGME President and Chief
Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, MACP. “Most notably, this
version represents our Board of Directors’ support to seek
excellence in creating diversity, equity, and inclusion within the
clinical learning environments in which residents and fellows are
learning and providing care.”
The ACGME and the CLER Program remain committed to continuous
improvement toward the goal of optimizing the delivery of safe,
high-quality patient care. The CLER Pathways document continuously
evolves in step with the dynamic needs of clinical learning
environments and is among the ACGME’s many efforts to help shape a
physician workforce that can meet the challenges of a rapidly
evolving health care environment.
“This new version of the CLER Pathways document, which
introduces the new Focus Area of DEI, retains an emphasis on the
clinical learning environment’s need to maintain close
collaboration with graduate medical education leadership on
supervision of residents and fellows to ensure patient safety and
the best possible patient care,” said ACGME Chief Sponsoring
Institutions and Clinical Learning Environments Officer Kevin B.
Weiss, MD, MPH. “This document will serve as the foundation for the
fifth CLER protocol that is planned for implementation in
2025.”
The full CLER Pathways to Excellence document is available on
the ACGME website.
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The ACGME is a private, non-profit, professional organization
responsible for the accreditation of 13,066 residency and
fellowship programs and the 886 institutions that sponsor these
programs in the United States. Residency and fellowship programs
educate close to 160,000 resident and fellow physicians in 182
specialties and subspecialties. The ACGME's Mission is to improve
health care and population health by assessing and enhancing the
quality of resident and fellow physicians' education through
advancements in accreditation and education.
Susan Holub
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
sholub@acgme.org