Our Story

St Mary Medical Center has an Internal Medicine Residency program that has been in existence for over fifty years.  Unfortunately, during the COVID pandemic the Sponsoring Institution was placed on probation due to complaints to the ACGME by our residents.  After a thorough investigation we realized that due to the rapid increase in COVID patients in our ICU our residents found themselves in a very challenging situation.

The facility had worked with Partners in Medical Education in the past and they were highly recommended. We had to totally overhaul how things were being done as it relates to our residents rotations in the ICU.  Heather Peters and Carmela Meyer are the GME consultants that worked with us through the process helping to overhaul our program. I’m happy to report that the Sponsoring Institution was removed from probation April 2022.  I would be happy to recommend Heather Peters and Carmela Meyer to anyone needing support for their GME program. Even though we are currently not on probation we have made the decision to continue our partnership with Partners in Medical Education Inc.

I am writing you to say thank you for the professionalism and guidance we received from our GME consultant, Cheryl Haynes. We started our working relationship with Cheryl in January of this year, and she help us immensely with the process of writing and submitting our specialty application, expanding our GME committee and preparation for our recent institutional site visit. Her past experiences as a program coordinator and a consultant for your company proved invaluable to all of us who had the opportunity to work with Cheryl.

It is often difficult to only have phone and zoom interactions with a colleague, but I felt an instant comfort in my working relationship with Mrs. Haynes. Not only did she provide excellent examples for us to follow, but she taught us many things we will use for years to come in developing our graduate medical education program. She often explained the “why” and that helped me understand how to prepare and present information to ACGME. You have a talented employee in Cheryl Haynes and I would welcome the opportunity to work with her again.

I hired Dr. Carmela Meyer though Partners in Medical Education, Inc. as a consultant for our GME Faculty Development team. Carmela was professional, a pleasure to work with, and brought a wealth of experience and knowledge. In our work together, Carmela led the development and implementation of a strategic plan, specifically for faculty development. Carmela took the time to understand our needs and was intuitive about needs we didn’t even realize we had.  She was supportive to our team and advocated to our institutional leadership on our behalf. She was an ambassador for faculty development and enabling us to be a pillar in GME.

In our many zoom and phone interactions, Mrs. Haynes provided excellent leadership and strategy for our team which had little expertise at the process’s beginning. She not only prepared our team for the process but educated us in essential elements of residency operation which will serve us for years to come. Cheryl Haynes is a talented professional whose work proved essential in the success of our program, and I would welcome future opportunities to work with her in other projects.

The two consultants we worked with from Partners in Medical Education, Heather and Amy, have been an amazing support in retooling all our processes and documentation.  They zero-ed in on the key issues that we needed to improve and provided us with a national perspective of programs’ experiences with ACGME site visits and ways to respond to citations.  They helped provide a balanced outside perspective and implemented changes that really helped the residents and faculty understand what we are trying to accomplish with resident education and support.  I think everyone in GME felt like they learned a lot from Heather and Amy, especially since our hospital is new to having graduate medical education.  They were absolutely a pleasure to work with and well worth the money!

Partners have taught me many new things as a Program director to incorporate Best Practices into my program administration. As a new DIO I have loved my guided journey and the great support Heather & Carmela have been for all our programs and our institution.