The Initiative for Innovation in Pediatric Education: A Snapshot of a Program Evaluation

Abstract

* Abbreviations: GME — : graduate medical education IIPE — : Initiative for Innovation in Pediatric Education LOI — : letter of intent As the Residency Review and Redesign Project came to a close in 2009, the Initiative for Innovation in Pediatric Education (IIPE) was ushered in as the next phase of ongoing evaluation and transformation of pediatric residency education. The mission of the IIPE is to initiate, facilitate, and oversee innovative change in pediatric residency education through carefully monitored, outcome-directed experimentation.1 The IIPE pursues this mission by supporting residency programs in their pursuit of innovative educational projects via a structured process for project review, consultation, monitoring, and dissemination. At the start of the IIPE, leaders of the Residency Review and Redesign Project wrote, “We need to recognize that conducting the business of graduate medical education (GME) is a project that is never complete and requires acknowledgment of a certain degree of ambiguity and uncertainty.”2 Recognizing that GME is a complex system, the IIPE leadership adopted developmental evaluation as its approach to program evaluation because it embraces ambiguity and uncertainty and because it could inform program development. Specifically, developmental evaluation aims to facilitate systematic, data-informed reflection and decision-making as the program evolves, whereas traditional evaluation approaches generally aim to improve a relatively stable program (process evaluation) or judge the merit and worth of an established program (outcome … Address correspondence to Dorene Balmer, PhD, RD, 701 West 168th St, Hammer Health Science Center, Lobby 10-A, New York, NY 10032. E-mail: db2595{at}columbia.edu