The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) has scheduled its accreditation visit to UNMC for Oct. 3-6, 2021. However, the College of Medicine has been preparing for the visit from the body that accredits medical schools since the summer of 2019.
Geoffrey Talmon, MD, faculty accreditation lead, said a core team of around 30 people have been hard at work preparing for re-accreditation. LCME accreditation is necessary for a medical school’s students to receive student loans, sit for board exams and receive the other benefits of a medical degree.
“We’ve been preparing for quite a while,” Dr. Talmon said. “In the spring of 2019, we got our subcommittees together, which have broad representation that includes College of Medicine and other UNMC faculty along with various staff members from across campus. They’ve been in the process of collecting data for the last year or more.”
Part of that data will be a compliance module that will roll out to College of Medicine faculty in August, Dr. Talmon said. Faculty and house officers must fill out the compliance module, which will be available in Canvas, by the end of September and become an annual routine.
“The compliance module helps us ensure that everyone who interacts with a medical student in any capacity understands the educational objectives and relevant policies, as well as how we assess medical students.
“It’s critical for the accreditation efforts that folks actually do it when it comes out,” Dr. Talmon said. “It’s a very light lift, and we’ve made it as non-onerous as possible, but it is essential for accreditation. The LCME has become much more explicit in the fact that the college needs to have oversight of the fact that faculty have an understanding of what students need to do,” Dr. Talmon said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Talmon’s team continues to assemble information for the documentation to send to the LCME prior to the visit, a report that will be hundreds of pages long.
“We do a self-study,” he said. “The team looks at all this data and determines our strengths and opportunities for us to further improve our program.”
UNMC medical students also are involved in the re-accreditation effort, compiling an ‘Independent Student Analysis,’ which also is given to the LCME.
“The team of external visitors review all of that documentation before they come, so they have a pretty decent idea of who we are and what we do,” Dr. Talmon said.
Dr. Talmon asked that the College of Medicine community understand that the accreditation process is ongoing, and his team may ask for help – people to provide information or take part in ad hoc task forces.
“Our team is doing yeoman’s work,” he said. “They have invested numerous hours in this and become experts in many of the areas that they’ve been assigned. They have done an incredible job of seeking out information and building expertise, and it’s made the process a lot easier.”
By starting so early, he said, team members also have had the opportunity to become more informed not only about current data but historical numbers, as well.
“When the survey visit team comes, we will be well-prepared to answer their questions,” he said. “I look forward to the support of the entire college as we prepare the necessary documents and get ready to welcome the LCME for our site visit.”