Clinical laboratory directors.

As we continue the series on education and training in pathology and laboratory medicine, a few common themes are beginning to emerge from this group of articles. First, interest in education and training is growing. Next, there is emerging evidence for the use of new approaches to education and training , several of which we have highlighted in this series. Last, but certainly not least, there is emphasis on the quantitative aspects of education and training: metrics to assess outcomes and effectiveness, new ways of tracking performance, and the use of data to guide programmatic development in education and training. Educating students and training residents in any discipline have the common goal of turning these individuals into fully qualified graduates who understand what they are supposed to do, how to do it, and how to do so in a responsible and ethical manner. With some exceptions, this goal is more easily defined for residents than it is for students, because residents generally are preparing for well-defined clinical or diagnostic roles in patient care. In the recent past, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) added a layer of training called the six Core Com-petencies, a set of requirements designed to help ensure that residents better understand their roles in health care systems and interdisciplinary care. Further changes are underway by the ACGME to guide training programs in setting-specific milestones— " specific points in development " that are part of " competency-based outcomes " —designed to help programs and trainees better monitor progress during training. 1 All of these changes are for the better, because education and training increasingly are moving into an era characterized by a need for measurable outcomes. Put another way, evidence-based education and training are needed just as much as evidence-based patient care. We need to know what works, what doesn't work, and of alternative approaches that are the most effective. We need data. But we need data for many things that up to now have been lacking. If one goal is to prepare residents and postdoc-toral fellows for their careers, we need much better data about what they actually do during those careers. In the article by Branda and colleagues 2 in this issue of the Journal, a group of academic clinical pathologists have undertaken the task of defining, in a quantifiable way, the activities of laboratory directors in one academic medical center. Some earlier …