Family Medicine Resident Remediation Compared Across Two CERA Studies.

Background And Objectives: From 2020 to 2022, multiple medical schools transitioned from teaching patient care directly to online electives. Family medicine program directors reported on these learners' abilities to meet the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core competencies during residency. The authors hypothesized an increased need for medical knowledge remediation in the 2023 Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (CERA) study.

Methods: Using the 2017 and 2023 CERA studies, the authors evaluated which factors were associated with residents requiring remediation, residents completing remediation, the duration of remediation, and the most remediated core competency.

Results: Compared to 2017, the percentage of residents who successfully remediated in the 2023 study increased (P=.006), while remediation duration stayed unchanged at 6 to 12 months. The top ACGME core competency needing remediation remained professionalism in both studies (2017: 38.1%; 2023: 45.1%; P=.10) with medical knowledge being second most common (2017: 30.2%; 2023: 25.2%; P=.20). We found no associations between non-U.S. medical graduate percentage, core faculty remediation training, professionalism training, or didactic hours and the number of residents undergoing remediation, the percentage of residents remediating successfully, or the most common competency remediated. Program director gender, degree, race, years of experience, underrepresented in medicine status, and remediation training were not associated with any resident remediation variables studied.

Conclusions: Professionalism remains the top core competency requiring remediation. We found no associations between resident, program, training, or program director factors and the core competency requiring remediation, the number of residents needing remediation, or the percentage of residents who completed remediation.