Internal Medicine 2007
ACP’s scientific meeting, Internal Medicine 2007, is only four weeks away!
New this year, ACP has invited some of its younger members to share their perspective on our annual meeting. Representatives from the ACP Council of Student Members and Council of Associates will be online daily, sharing their thoughts and views as contributors to the ACP Internal Medicine 2007 Blog.
Whether you join us for Internal Medicine 2007 or not, be sure to visit the ACP Blog to learn about the conference’s activities or to post your own thoughts on the meeting.
The ACP Blog will begin on Thursday, April 19 and end on Sunday, April 22, 2007. Please visit our Web site for complete details regarding Internal Medicine 2007.
ACP Mentoring Database
ACP recognizes that an internist's education, training, and early career are both exciting and challenging. With so many important decisions to be made, providing opportunities for medical students and early career physicians to seek out experienced colleagues for guidance is important. This is why ACP has developed the Mentoring Database.
The Mentoring Database enables students, physicians-in-training, and early career physicians to seek out more experienced colleagues for advice on a number of topics. Topics of interest include how to achieve a balance between medical school and personal life, the challenges of residency, post-residency and career planning, practical recommendations for starting a practice and more.
College members who provide personal and professional guidance include Program Directors, Clerkship Directors, Chairs of Medicine, practicing internists and residents. The online Mentoring Database is a benefit for members only. ACP members can search for a mentor by selecting various options from the menu on the Web site.
Other mentoring opportunities available to ACP members include the Medical Student Mentoring Breakfast and the Young Physicians Mentoring Breakfast, which are both held at the College’s annual meeting. For information on local mentoring opportunities, visit your chapter’s Web site.
Redesign of Residency Training in Internal Medicine
The national stakeholder organizations for internal medicine are working together to redesign residency training so that it best fulfills the needs of future internists and their patients. Several of the driving forces behind this collaboration include the need to train a variety of internists with different career goals and ultimate scopes of practice, the need to strengthen ambulatory education, the need to improve upon the models for faculty involvement with resident education, and the need for training to keep pace with the rapidly evolving healthcare system. ACP and the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM) published papers in the June 2006 edition of Annals of Internal Medicine outlining their recommendations for training redesign. The ACP paper
and the APDIM paper are both available online.
Through its Educational Innovation Project (EIP), the Residency Review Committee for Internal Medicine (RRC-IM), which accredits all internal medicine residency and fellowship training programs, has recently provided opportunities for selected programs to develop innovative educational models that are simultaneously intended to improve residency training and the quality of patient care. A listing of the training programs that are participating in the EIP and reports of their progress to date can be found on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Web site.
The Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine – which includes APDIM, the Association of Professors of Medicine, and several other constituent organizations – created a task force on the redesign of residency training that has developed specific proposals for redesign and plans for their implementation. This task force also has representatives from ACP and from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). As this process for reform continues, the AAIM task force will be working closely with the RRC-IM so that the optimal training program design and requirements for accreditation can be coordinated.
Stay tuned for further developments as the work of these various organizations continues!
New Editorial Section in Annals
ACP debuted a new section in the January issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, the College’s flagship journal publication. “In the Clinic” offers in-depth, evidence-based and up-to-date coverage of a single important topic for physicians working in an internal medicine practice. Diabetes was the first “In the Clinic” topic. Other topics planned for 2007 include smoking cessation, asthma, peripheral arterial disease, heart failure, irritable bowel syndrome, headache, influenza, depression, and osteoarthritis.
Annals of Internal Medicine, is one of the most widely cited peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. The journal has been published for 79 years and accepts only 7 percent of the original research studies submitted for publication. To learn more about Annals and its new “In the Clinic” section, please visit the Annals Web site.
COA Proposed Resolutions
The Council of Associates has proposed three resolutions to the Board of Governors for consideration at their April 2007 meeting. If approved, the resolutions will be forwarded to the Board of Regents for a final decision. Two of the resolutions call for an increase in ACP resources directed toward addressing the needs of International Medical Graduates and physicians entering hospital-based medicine. The third resolution proposes a change in the basic criteria for subspecialists to advance to Fellowship.
Please visit the Resident Newsgroup to comment on any of these topics. To access the resolutions and the Resident Newsgroup, you will need your ACP username and password.
Advocacy Briefs: Health Professions Education Programs Receive Funding Increase
On February 15, President Bush signed a $463.5 billion spending package to fund much of the federal government for the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year. The measure includes $185 million for the Title VII health professions programs, an increase of $40 million (27.6 percent) over the 2006 fiscal year. The additional Title VII funds include $32 million to restore the geriatrics training programs to the 2005 fiscal year level and an $8 million increase for primary care programs. ACP is a member of the Health Professions and Nursing Education Coalition, which has been actively advocating for increased funding for Title VII programs.
Title VII includes general internal medicine, general pediatrics and family medicine education programs. Serious health professional shortages continue to exist in rural and underserved areas. This is partially due to market forces driving health professionals to practice where higher wages are available. The health professions programs were designed to combat this pattern by educating and training providers with the goal that they return to serve in rural and underserved areas. As a result, the graduates of these programs are three to ten times more likely to practice in medically underserved areas than graduates of non-funded programs.
Leadership Day 2007
For more than a decade, ACP members have met face-to-face with leaders in Washington, D.C. as part of Leadership Day on Capitol Hill. Leadership Day has increased the visibility of internal medicine issues and helped to build a team of leaders who advocate for the College's positions throughout the year. Leadership Day 2007 will be held Tuesday, May 15 and Wednesday, May 16. Associate and medical student activities will begin during the afternoon of Monday, May 14.
Leadership Day attendees are given briefings from White House officials as well as Capitol Hill staff and members of Congress who are key health decision-makers. Leadership Day attendees will receive an in-depth orientation on the College's top legislative priorities and have the opportunity to network with other chapters to learn how to conduct an effective advocacy program.
For more information regarding Leadership Day 2007, please visit us online or contact ACP's Washington D.C. office by e-mail.
Make Your Voice Heard on Capitol Hill
Key Contacts are asked to communicate with their members of Congress regarding issues of importance to internists and their patients and report the results back to ACP. As key issues approach the decision-making stage on Capitol Hill, the College e-mails or faxes legislative alerts to Key Contacts. Legislative alerts include all of the necessary information (including sample messages that can be easily personalized) to send informative communications to members of Congress.
There are currently 429 Associate members of the College who serve as Key Contacts. A breakdown of the number of Associate Key Contacts by state is available online.
ACP members are not required to have existing relationships with their members of Congress before becoming a Key Contact. Please help ACP with its efforts on Capitol Hill and encourage your residents to enroll as Key Contacts today.
Where Are Your Residents Going?
ACP is interested in learning where your PGY3 residents are going after they complete residency. Please encourage your residents to be on the look-out for an e-mail from the College in mid-May requesting this information, and help us obtain the most accurate data possible.
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Benefits of ACP Membership
Associate Member Benefits: ACP offers Associate membership for internal medicine residents and subspecialty fellows-in-training.
Join ACP: Take advantage of members-only benefits by becoming an Associate member of ACP today.
New SEP Points Option with MKSAP 14!
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MKSAP 14 subscribers now have a new option for earning SEP points in the ABIM Maintenance of Certification program.
Annals Audio Summary Podcasts
Hear a summary of current Annals articles and quick interviews with authors in an easy-listening format.