Created to service the developing needs of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) program at Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC), the department of GME Research & Quality Improvement is on a mission to help build a sustainable and vibrantly engaged community of medical scholars equipping, resourcing, and supporting our faculty, residents and staff with the skills and opportunities to advance a wide array of scholarly pursuits.
We believe that physician scholarship supports the growth of evidence-based medicine, practices, and medical education advances within the Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) community and ultimately adds value to patient outcomes.
Our Mission
The GME Research Team strives to build continuous research opportunities to develop critical research skills, collaboration, project completion, and dissemination of pragmatic research studies for our stakeholders. We will accomplish this through an engaging, data-rich research environment, using innovative technology and timely access to expert support. We will continually work to remove barriers to support and facilitate the quality development of research that will matter to GME and healthcare.
We work to develop a research environment and process that engages and supports GME staff, faculty, residents, and fellows to reframe research from an academic add-on to a welcomed, necessary part of everyday practice.
Our Vision
All GME staff, faculty, residents and fellows, will continually appraise and share rigorously developed quality evidence that will influence GME and healthcare practices in our local, national and international medical communities.
Critical Inquiry becomes part of our daily practice.
Presentations
Publications
Our Departmental Values
Building on the NGHS institutional core values, GME research values guide our responses and processes.
Research Must Matter to Our Community
We advance our knowledge of patient care through compassionate identification of the most pressing health, social and economic concerns of our constituents. This situates our research goals and evidence of scientific merit.
Intentional Focus Matters
We focus our resources and scholarship intentionally, building expertise in areas which honor our patients, our residents and the community-based focus of our health-system. Together, we will progress toward our community goals.
Perspective Matters
We strive to understand our research through the lens of all stakeholders through open dialogue, peer review, ethical recruitment of participants and consideration of research impact on our community. This acknowledgement of “knowing what we know” as a social construct enriches our research agenda.
Ethical Rigor is Critical
We focus on quality not quantity of scholarship. We pursue rigorous design and implementation as more impactful on our community than number of publications, and more advantageous to our residents as they learn foundational research skills.
Key Features
Our program is committed to developing and supporting opportunities to develop quality research based on your passion.
- Each resident completes our foundational research skills course as part of our Cornerstones of Resident Education (CoRE) which is an innovative curriculum designed for both our PGY-1 and PGY-2 residents. It allows for dedicated curricular time, consistent messaging and education on important topics, and access to institutional leaders who provide support for all residency programs.
- Access to the GME Research Canvas site for asynchronous mini tutorials, resources and guides.
- Access to cutting edge research software, statistician and qualitative analysis expert.
- Research mentoring program connects faculty and cross-discipline researchers in communities of practice focused on area of interest, for example healthcare disparities, critical care transitions and preventative medicine.
- Opportunities to experience full, multi-site phase two and three clinical trials.
- Full guidance and support through our IRB process and each stage of the GME research process.
- Opportunities throughout the year to submit work for publication, assisted by in-house editing and presentation coaching as needed.
- NGHS Research Week each Fall and GME Resident Research Day in May.
- Journal Club for medical education.
- Preparation help for discipline Journal Clubs.
- Learn about our mentoring philosophy
Journal Club
Journal Club is a regularly scheduled didactic session often used in Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs for residents, fellows and faculty to gather and discuss current scholarly literature to increase their knowledge of clinical care topics. It increases awareness of applying evidence-based medicine in daily practice and provides a forum to gain lifelong habits of regularly reading to stay current in your chosen field of medicine.
Northeast Georgia Health System has its own spin on Journal Club where we read, review and discuss topics relevant to GME. Participation is easy—just read the articles before the meeting and bring your thoughts, opinions and ideas of how we can apply some of the information to our programs!
Research & Innovation Month
The annual Research & Innovation Month event presents an opportunity to celebrate and showcase the research and scholarly activities of NGHS investigators.
Our GME residents, fellows and faculty take this opportunity to present their research through posters, video presentations, and publications.
Visit the Research Month page to review the research happening now at GME!
Frequently Asked Questions
NGMC has been conducting research since 1996. There are currently several phase two and phase three clinical trials in cardiology and oncology, research projects on medical practices and processes, COVID-19, healthcare disparities, health literacy and preventative care, physician bias and deprescribing processes, as well as physician practices in mental health management and medical education research. If you have an idea, we can help guide you in every stage of study development.
Don’t worry! NGMC GME is looking for residents who are critical thinkers! We welcome individuals who may or may not have had the opportunity to complete a research study during undergraduate or medical school. We are looking for residents who share one key trait—curiosity! Part of our research program includes a comprehensive research skills course and a research mentoring program – we are with you every step of the way.
There are several ways to connect with a faculty member who shares your research interest. We are building a researcher directory, where you can scan the research bios provided and contact a mentor directly. The GME research department can connect you or you can connect on your own. No matter which way you prefer, we have research mentoring agreements and guidance to help maximize the experience.
Yes, with some caveats. If you are interested in gaining experience in clinical trials, we can certainly arrange that, however participation as a researcher will depend on several factors: the external agreements, the principal investigator and the faculty involvement. For internal GME projects, collaborative inter-professional projects, and multi-organizational community projects, you are welcome to reach out to the principal investigator or contact us in GME research to explore the opportunities. Additionally, our team is busy building a comprehensive research project directory where you can look for research teams and researchers can find you!
Understandable after medical school! However, after you take a moment to breathe, you will realize that to be a 21st-century evidence-based physician who is committed to excellent patient care, you have to be analytical, discerning, and current. Research has found that physicians who are engaged in consistent and meaningful research are more satisfied with their career and provide better standards of patient care. Research is not just about NIH or FDA multi-site pharmaceutical trials, at NGMC we support small scale research as well as the larger trials. We also spend a lot of time helping you figure out what YOU are curious about and turning that into a manageable project. The requirements to “produce” a research project vary by program and by your fellowship plans. Engaging in the research process is a personal investment which goes beyond your course requirements. Come and see us in the GME research department and let us help you find your academic conversation. It will be worth it!
Graduate Medical Education at NGMC has invested in a stand-alone GME research department which provides research education, support and oversight to all GME faculty, staff and residents. Part of that investment is in people, part is in cutting-edge research tools such as ENDNOTE citation manager, IBM SPSS 28 professional edition, NViVO natural language analytic program, Qualtrics Research Survey Platform, and Qlik sense clinical database for research. Information literacy is critical to the modern physician and we provide ongoing drop-in labs, work sessions and consultations for EPIC data and literature searches. We also provide a curated series of mini-tutorials on each element of the research process within our Canvas LMS. We are currently developing a de-identified medical education data registry.