Pediatrics Milestones: A Developmental Approach to the Competencies

In 2009, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) partnered to create the Pediatric Milestone Project. One of the goals of this project was to reframe the 6 competencies in the context of the specialty, identifying markers of achievement (ie, milestones) along the path of residency training. They invited Carol Carraccio, MD, to be the project leader, and her first task was to establish an Advisory Board and a Working Group. Advisory Board members were recruited from the parent organizations as well as from the pool of national leaders in medical education, both from within and outside of pediatrics. The selected Working Group, composed of members of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD), one member of the Medicine Pediatrics Program Directors' Association, two representatives of the ACGME, and a resident member, was charged with the following tasks: (1) redefine the competencies within the context of pediatrics; (2) set performance standards by level of training for achievement of the milestones; and (3) identify tools that could be embraced by the whole of the pediatric community to assess performance.

ABP, American Board of Pediatrics, ACGME, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, APPD, Association of Pediatric Program Directors, GME, Graduate medical education, LEARN, Longitudinal Educational Assessment and Research Network, UME, Undergraduate medical education