Report of the national survey of Urology Program Directors: attitudes and actions regarding the accreditation council for graduate medical education regulations.

PURPOSE: Residency programs in the United States are held accountable for achieving outcomes based on the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) regulations for improving resident fatigue and education. A national survey of Urology Program Directors was conducted to determine the attitudes toward the new regulations and the actions taken to implement them.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A national survey was developed by an ad hoc committee and distributed electronically. A total of 24 multiple-choice customized Likert scale questions were used to obtain opinions from Urology Program Directors across the country. The data were evaluated using statistical analysis.

RESULTS: There was an 88% response rate to the survey. Of the respondents 53% demonstrated a statistically significant association between the size of the program and the degree to which the program was involved in addressing the duty hours standard (p = 0.015). A majority of program directors reported involvement in educating residents and faculty about the ACGME competencies. According to program directors, faculty members were negative about training residents in an 80-hour workweek and residents seemed to be apathetic.

CONCLUSIONS: The national survey of Urology Program Directors has demonstrated that most programs have started to attend to the cultural change occurring in GME. Although there are some pockets of resistance to the ACGME regulations, the duty hours have been folded into most programs with little apprehension. Barriers to implementation of the Core Competencies discovered in this survey included inadequate validated instrumentation, inadequate staffing, and insufficient financial support.