Bernstein Elected to ACGME Board

APA President Carol Bernstein, M.D., has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the national accrediting body for residency education in the United States.

Bernstein is vice chair for education and associate dean for graduate medical education at the New York University School of Medicine.

The ACGME is a private, nonprofit organization that was established in 1981 from a consensus in the academic medical community for an independent accrediting organization. ACGME's parent members are the AMA, American Board of Medical Specialties, Council of Medical Specialty Societies, American Hospital Association, and Association of American Medical Colleges.

“I am honored and privileged to have been appointed to the ACGME Board of Directors,” Bernstein told Psychiatric News. “I look forward to using my perspectives from my leadership experiences at APA and in graduate medical education at NYU and Columbia to further advance the GME agenda on a national level.”

“It is good to have someone from psychiatry with as much experience as Carol on the board of the ACGME,” said James H. Scully Jr., M.D., APA medical director and president of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies. “In the world of medical education, ACGME is the place to be. It is the body that determines all manner of rules governing medical training, and we are lucky to have someone as widely respected as Carol to represent us there.”

Bernstein's election expands psychiatry's involvement in the ACGME leadership. Among other psychiatrists on its Board of Directors are Christopher Colenda, M.D., chancellor for health sciences at West Virginia University, and Kayla Pope, M.D., J.D., APA's member-in-training trustee, who is the ACGME resident director.