Three-Year Family Medicine Residency Program Use of the ACGME Core Competencies to Assess Physician Competency: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Poor patient satisfaction during care has been linked to the inadequate evaluation of resident knowledge during residency training programs. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medicine Education (ACGME) set guidelines for resident education in the accredited medical training programs, that describes the required areas in which a resident must indicate competence in order to be deemed capable of autonomous practice, termed the ACGME Core Competencies. To evaluate the usefulness of the ACGME Core Competencies in terms of resident competence, I completed a literary synthesis in the form of a scoping review. This review aims to examine the extant literature on the tools utilized in the evaluation of family medicine resident performance during residency. The results indicated that direct observation is most commonly used to evaluate resident competency, while multisource evaluations, including the use of peer reviews and patients, provided constructive feedback and demonstrated improvements in resident performance and patient care satisfaction. A standardized evaluation tool for resident performance during residency training is needed to successfully analyze resident capabilities, as all residents should be held to the same assessment standards. Further research may reveal what multisource assessment methods should be recommended for the standardized assessment of resident competence during training nationwide.