Matthew Macaluso, D.O., has been selected to receive the 2027-28 Faculty Innovation in Education Award from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a nationally competitive honor that recognizes innovation in psychiatric education.
The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Faculty Innovation in Education Award is a nationally competitive program that recognizes a select number of faculty members each year for innovative educational initiatives with the potential to advance psychiatric and neurologic training.
Macaluso's funded project, “A Competency-Based Curriculum for Standardized Clinical Skills Verification in Psychiatry,” will focus on developing and evaluating a structured approach to teaching, assessing and verifying essential clinical skills among psychiatry trainees.
Unlike traditional approaches that rely heavily on faculty evaluations and subjective assessments of clinical performance, the project aims to develop a structured, competency-based framework for evaluating and verifying essential clinical skills using standardized assessment methods. The goal is to establish a more objective, consistent, and reproducible process for determining whether trainees have demonstrated the competencies necessary for independent clinical practice.
"Although competency-based education has become increasingly important in graduate medical education, there remains considerable variability in how clinical skills are assessed and how competency is demonstrated," Macaluso said. "Our goal is to develop a structured approach to clinical skills assessment that can be implemented within our residency program at UAB and ultimately adapted for use by other psychiatry training programs nationally."
By developing a standardized and reproducible approach to clinical skills verification, the project aims to improve the consistency, reliability, and quality of competency assessment in psychiatry residency training. If successful, the framework could be adapted by other training programs nationally, with the longer-term goal of strengthening psychiatric education and supporting high-quality patient care.
The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology established the Faculty Innovation in Education Award to support educational projects that have the potential to advance training and professional development within psychiatry and neurology.
"It is certainly an honor to receive this recognition from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, particularly given the organization's important role in establishing standards for our profession," Macaluso said. "I am grateful for the opportunity and for the support of our department and colleagues at UAB."