Editor’s Note: The UNMC College of Medicine is currently in the process of seeking reaccreditation through the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). The LCME site visit is scheduled for Oct. 6-9, 2013. During the accreditation process, Hugh Stoddard, Ph.D., director and special assistant dean for medical education, has been providing a monthly update on accreditation.
Question of the Month:
Q: I saw in the Educational Support Office newsletter blog that the designated “faculty lead” for our LCME accreditation visit is leaving UNMC. How will this affect our self-study and our site visit?
A: The faculty lead for the 2013 visit, Hugh Stoddard, Ph.D., assistant dean for medical education, has left UNMC to take a new position as assistant dean for education at Emory University in Atlanta. Gerald Moore, M.D., senior associate dean for academic affairs, will take over the faculty lead role. Dr. Moore served this role for the two previous LCME visits in 1998 and 2005.
This change should have little impact on the accreditation process. The faculty lead is a role defined by the LCME (it was previously called the self-study coordinator).
The faculty lead is responsible for ensuring that all of the necessary documentation and analyses are collected and distributed to the LCME and the site visitors. The person in this position should be a school leader who has broad knowledge of the entire program.
The other position within the school that the LCME defines is the “site visit coordinator,” which is the person who catalogs and assembles the documents into folders and plans the logistics for the site visit team. Judy Houfek will continue as the site visit coordinator for the College of Medicine.
It is important that preparation for the LCME visit be a team effort with involvement and ‘buy-in’ from all faculty members (as noted in a previous update in InterCOM newsletter). The faculty lead is instrumental in coordinating the process and training other faculty members on their roles. However, the database, self-study, and all other documents are collective efforts by the whole faculty and do not represent any one person’s work or perspective. Thus, despite this change in faculty lead, there should be no resultant change in our LCME work.