Residency Readiness Pilot Bootcamp

The Residency Readiness Pilot Bootcamp is a structured, national framework developed under the Transition to Residency (T2R) Working Group of the AACOM UME‑GME Task Force to help colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) validate and prepare graduates for the clinical, professional, and practical demands of residency. Positioned within a larger T2R charge—to improve students’ journeys through residency by focusing on data collection, residency readiness, and unmatched students—the Residency Boot Camp Action Group produced a concrete deliverable: the Readiness for Residency Bootcamp Implementation Playbook. This playbook functions as an implementation guide for COMs, offering a recommended list of skills to validate, suggested refresher resources, and a national framework COMs can adapt to local contexts. The Bootcamp initiative emphasizes standardization and portability across institutions, so that graduating DOs demonstrate a consistent baseline of readiness as they enter graduate medical education. The playbook’s orientation is pragmatic and operational: it outlines core competencies and practical procedures that colleges can use to design and run a residency readiness bootcamp, including guidance on which clinical and professional skills to assess, how to structure refresher materials, and how to validate learner readiness at transition points. By framing a Bootcamp as both an educational intervention and a validation mechanism, the T2R Working Group aims to reduce variability in incoming resident preparedness, improve resident performance in early clinical rotations, and provide programs with clearer signals about graduates’ capabilities. The Residency Readiness Pilot Bootcamp is intended for final‑year medical students and recent graduates, delivered by COMs using the playbook’s recommended skill set and resources. The implementation guidance supports COMs in aligning pre‑graduation experiences with expectations in graduate medical education, facilitating smoother transitions from UME to GME. The initiative also complements parallel Action Groups within T2R—Advising and Data Collection—so that bootcamp design and outcomes can be informed by advising best practices and by systematic data collection about preparedness and post‑transition outcomes. The Advising Action Group’s work on student‑centric guidance and the Data Collection Action Group’s focus on measurable indicators create a feedback loop, allowing COMs to refine bootcamp content and validation strategies based on learner needs and outcome data. The playbook represents a consensus building effort: it synthesizes recommended practices into a replicable model that institutions can tailor without losing fidelity to national readiness goals. As an institutional resource, the Bootcamp playbook provides COMs with concrete starting points—recommended lists of validated skills, suggested refresher curricula, and implementation considerations—that can be integrated into existing transition programming, capstones, or senior‑year clinical experiences. The Residency Readiness Pilot Bootcamp therefore serves both as an educational accelerator for individual learners and as a quality improvement mechanism for medical schools and residency programs, with the ultimate goal of enhancing patient care by ensuring graduates enter residency with validated, demonstrable readiness.