Innovation in pediatric education: promoting and undergoing transformational change.

Abstract

The Residency Review and Redesign Project (R3P), a 4-year study of pediatrics training supported by the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) Foundation, concluded with recommendations to develop a process to foster ongoing innovation in education rather than a product such as a curriculum that could quickly become outdated.1 To that end, the ABP began funding the Initiative for Innovation in Pediatric Education (IIPE) program in 2009 with the purpose of stimulating and facilitating innovation in pediatric education.2 As a program, the IIPE comprised a director and a project support team who answered to the IIPE oversight committee. Just as the IIPE represented the natural evolution of R3P, so too another natural evolution is unfolding: the IIPE is transforming into the Pediatrics Milestones Assessment Collaborative (PMAC), a joint project of the National Board of Medical Examiners, the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD), and the ABP.3 This report coincides with a time of transition in which we (the authors) look back over the past 5 years to examine the events and activities that shaped the IIPE program and to celebrate its consequences. Borrowing from the wisdom of Kierkegaard, we also examine what can best be “understood backward,” that is, emergent core values that we could not have known in advance but that may inform similar efforts “living forward.” ### Strategic Relationships That Catalyzed Growth Two strategic partnerships emerged shortly after the IIPE’s inception. First, IIPE partnered with the APPD to build the APPD Longitudinal Educational Assessment Research Network (LEARN); this network supports study design, analysis, and data archiving in multisite educational research projects.4 The second partnership emerged in response to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s requirement that each … Address correspondence to Dorene Balmer, PhD, 6621 Fannin St, A 188.03, Houston TX 77030. E-mail: dorene.balmer{at}bcm.edu