Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Tweeting back to the future
I returned in early November from Association of American Medical Colleges’ Annual Meeting 2013 in Philadelphia, which happens to be the site of the very first AAMC conference in 1876. Perhaps it is this historic backdrop which made it more poignant when AAMC President and CEO Darrell Kirch, MD, charged the audience to rise to the occasion during our most challenging time, or our health care system’s “moment of truth.” Between sessions on how academic health centers needed to evolve to survive healthcare reform and how medical students need to avoid the “jaws of death” from the Match, there was certainly much to fear and much to learn. In spite of this, there are always moments where it was undeniable that the future was bright. But, the most interesting moments at this meeting where when it felt like we were going back to the future.
One of those moments was sitting in on the CLER (Clinical Learning Environment Review), or the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education institutional site visit process, which is not meant to be scary, but helpful! As a non-punitive visit, it’s meant to catalyze the necessary changes needed to help improve the learning climate in teaching hospitals. This session was particularly salient for me as I transitioned from being an associate program director into role of Director for Graduate Medical Education Clinical Learning Environment Innovation about a month ago.
At one point, Kevin B. Weiss, MD, MPH, FACP, described the CLER site visitors observing a handoff, and in that one moment, they saw the resident bashing the ER, failure of supervision, the medical students left out, and an opportunity to report a near miss that was ignored. Even though CLER is new, he made it sound like the site visitors were going back in time and nothing had changed. Have we not made a dent in any of these areas? I guess it’s probably safest to pretend like its 2003 and we need a lot more training in quality, safety, handoffs, supervision, fatigue, and everyone’s favorite … professionalism.
After being the only tweeter at times in the Group of Resident Affairs sessions, I ventured into the tweeting epicenter of the meeting at the digital literacy session. There, I not only learned about a very cool digital literacy toolkit for educators, but also got to connect with some awesome social media mavens who use technology to advance medical education. While I have access to these technophiles through Twitter (you know who you are), it was NOT the same as talking about the future of social media and medical education face-to-face. Call me old-fashioned, but connecting with this group over a meal was just what this doctor ordered. My only wish is that we had more time together.
Lastly, we went back to the future in our session showcasing the winners of the Teaching Value and Choosing Wisely Competition at both the AAMC and American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation meeting last week. One of the recurring themes that keeps emerging in these sessions, in addition to a recent #meded tweet chat, is that the death of clinical skills (history taking and physical exam) promotes overuse and reliance on tests in teaching hospitals. Could it be that by reinvigorating these bedrock clinical skills and bringing back the “master clinician”, we could liberate our patients from unnecessary and wasteful tests? I certainly hope so, and it can’t hurt to be a better doctor. Moreover, one of the most powerful tools that was mentioned was the time-honored case report! In fact, case reports have been resurrected to highlight avoidable care in a new JAMA Internal Medicine series called “Teachable Moments.”
And lastly, in the spirit of going back to the bedside, our MERITS (medical education fellowship team) submitted a video entry to the Beyond Flexner competition on what medical education would be like in 2033. While the impressive winners are showcased here, our nostalgic entry was aptly titled Back to the Future and Back to the Bedside, and envisioned a future where all students, regardless of their year, are doing what they came to medical school to do, see patients.
Vineet Arora, MD, is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. She is Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist, supervising internal medicine residents and students caring for general medicine patients, and serves as a career advisor and mentor for several medical students and residents, and directs the NIH-sponsored Training Early Achievers for Careers in Health (TEACH) Research program, which prepares and inspires talented diverse Chicago high school students to enter medical research careers. This post originally appeared on her blog, FutureDocs.
Labels: FutureDocs, guest post, medical education, new technology, professionalism, social media, Vineet Arora
posted by Vineet Arora, MD at
11:00 AM
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Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Auscultation
Ira S. Nash,
MD, FACP, is the senior vice president and executive director of the North Shore-LIJ
Medical Group, and a professor of Cardiology and Population Health at Hofstra North
Shore-LIJ School of Medicine. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and
Cardiovascular Diseases and was in the private practice of cardiology before joining the
full-time faculty of Massachusetts General Hospital.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
infections occur in the hospital and ways to prevent these
infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
Suneel Dhand, MD, ACP Member
Suneel Dhand, MD,
ACP Member, is a practicing physician in Massachusetts. He has published numerous
articles in clinical medicine, covering a wide range of specialty areas including;
pulmonology, cardiology, endocrinology, hematology, and infectious disease. He has also
authored chapters in the prestigious "5-Minute Clinical Consult" medical textbook. His
other clinical interests include quality improvement, hospital safety, hospital
utilization, and the use of technology in health care.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using
novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical
informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
Informatics
Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health &
Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to
biomedical and health informatics.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication
with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine
are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a
researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast
cancer.
Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
Education (CME), and a Program Director in Medicine-Pediatrics at
the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he
blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about
medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a
Distractible Kind).
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
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