April 17, 2019

Well, the LCME team has left the building and we had our summary report at Westcott with the team and the provost at noon today.  I just wanted to take the time first and thank everyone for all the work of the last 18 months getting ready, the work involved in the Mock Survey visit and the incredible preparations for the actual team visit this week.   The survey visit this week  involved 24 separate meetings with over 150 faculty, staff, students, deans, chairs, hospital leaders, and residents providing a VERY complete survey of all or our activities and our educational program.   This could not have happened without the incredible support of the Office of Medical Education, particularly Cathy Bell and Rebecca Garside, along with Renata McCann in my office and Kelly Gallavan in Clinical Affairs.   I would like to especially thank Mike Overton for his dedication and excellence in leading this process over the past 18 months, overseeing the creation of our materials for submission, and keeping up with the requests of the team while they were here.  And to do this while running a course this month was clearly above and beyond!!

The team was very complementary of our students and educational program and appreciated the candor and cooperation with some tough questioning.   They noted the following things as strengths and worthy of note:

• Our community based educational model that helps us to attain our mission
• Our Pipeline programs, including Bridge and SSTRIDE which are examples of successful efforts to enhance student diversity.

The process of an LCME self-study is never designed to be “zero defects.”  It is a quality improvement process that allows us to take a hard look at ourselves and discover in advance those areas that could be improved.   We identified several areas over the past 6-9 months that needed to be addressed or improved upon and have developed plans to address them even before the team arrived.   The Team Report identified these same issues and some others.  We have some work to do to address issues in our strategic planning, curriculum management and monitoring, teaching and supervision, and medical student selection, promotion and advising, along with personal counseling and health-care access.  While we made every effort during the visit to help them understand our unique model, some of the findings demonstrate that we were not successful. 

The site visit survey team always makes it very clear that their report and findings are NOT final until the full report is submitted to the LCME for review at a future meeting.  They will make the final determinations on our findings and accreditation status.  Since the LCME only meets as a group three times a year in February, June, and October, our visit and survey report will not be reviewed until the October meeting.   We will see a “draft” copy of the team report  in 6 to 8 weeks to allow us to comment and address any errors of fact.  But otherwise we will wait until October (like we did in April 2011).  

I am very proud and thankful for the incredible work you do every day to make this a great place to work and watch students grow into patient-centered exemplary physicians.   I am grateful for your excellence.  

Sincerely,    J.

John P. Fogarty, M.D.

Dean

Florida State University College of Medicine