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In this Issue:
- Greetings to all ACP members!
- Chapter Meeting
- Spring BOG and IM2021
- Call to Action
- Leadership Day
- Northwest Regional Doctors Dilemma
- Your Well Being
- Opportunities to get Involved
Emily C. Church, MD, FACP, ACP Governor
Greetings to all ACP members!
I am proud to represent you as the new Governor for our Alaska Chapter. For those of you who don't know me let me tell you a little bit about myself. I attended Oregon Health Sciences University on a military scholarship, which led me to Travis AFB in California for residency and eventually to JBER here in Anchorage. After completing my military service I joined the Alaska Hospitalist Group and stayed in this amazing state to practice internal medicine. I look forward to getting to know more of you over the next four years.
Welcome new Fellows and Members within the last 6 months! We look forward to meeting you all and encourage getting involved. See opportunities to get involved later in this newsletter.
Magdalena Bomgardner, Transitional Medical Graduate Member, North Pole
Juliet T. Bramante, Medical Student Member, Soldotna
Ryan Apathy, Medical Student Member, Anchorage
Mary Bradsky, Medical Student Member, Fairbanks
Gail Norton, MD, Physician Affiliate, Fairbanks
Alexa Rodin, MD, Member, Soldotna
Thomas Humphreys, Affiliate, Fairbanks
Chapter Meeting
ACP AK and AKOMA CME 2021 was held virtually April 9-10, 2021. Sessions were recorded (except the ABIM MOC SEP module) and are now available online HERE to those who registered for up to a year! If you missed registering for the conference it is not too late! You can register online HERE and view the sessions at your leisure. Congratulations to our worthy award recipients Kristin Mitchell MD FACP for Excellence in Rural Medicine, and Sarah Doaty MD for Health and Public Policy committee award. Congratulations also to our exhibit hall raffle winners Song-Qin Gan MD FACP who won $100 Amazon card and Christina Mainar DO who won the Apple AirPods. Meeting highlights included a Covid-19 update from Dr. Jay Butler and sessions about opioid use disorder and pain control which count toward the opioid training CME requirement.
Spring BOG and IM2021
Spring Board of Governors was held April 26-28 and IM2021 was held April 29- May 1 both virtually. My first introduction to the other chapter governors across the nation and the globe. With the new platform of virtual attendance there are lots of opportunity to collaborate with other chapters and take advantage of their resources. Will keep you all posted on mini symposiums upcoming. The scientific IM2021 was fabulous. Although I missed the opportunity to travel it was so convenient to be able to view any session at any time.
Call to Action
Are you concerned about a practice or clinical issue or have an idea you'd like to suggest? If so, consider submitting a resolution to your Governor or chapter council. Initiating a resolution provides ACP members an opportunity to focus attention at the ACP national level on a particular issue or topic that concerns them. The deadline for submitting new resolutions to be heard at the Spring 2022 Board of Governors Meeting is October 4, 2021
Leadership Day
Leadership Day was conducted virtually, chapter members attended were Health and Public Policy committee chair Kristin Mitchell MD FACP, Robert Bundtzen FACP, Molly Southworth MD MACP and myself Emily Church MD FACP. We were able to meet with a representative from each of our congressional delegates. They were very receptive to our input and advocacy for local and national issues including supporting the value of primary care, telehealth, and the WWAMI program as a way to augment our internal medicine workforce. We look forward to next year when we can attend in person and include our medical student members as well.
Please look out for an email from our executive director requesting your voting district and representatives. This could be helpful to our HPPC committee in the future.
Northwest Regional Doctors Dilemma
We are excited to be partnering with several northwest chapters to compete first locally within our chapters then regional against potentially Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Utah and Idaho in the first ever Northwest Regional Doctors Dilemma (think Internal Medicine Jeopardy). Get ready to team up in teams of 3-4 to compete against Alaska chapter teams. We hope to accomplish this as a hybrid event both in person and virtually this fall. Team up with those in your area as your team will need to compete on screen together with one buzzer each team. All members that are Masters, Fellows or general “Big M” members are welcome to compete. We are looking for one chapter member willing to assist one of the moderators to “vet” the questions prior to the event. Please contact Julie Lake if you are interested. ACP national held their resident DD competition 5/14/2021 and it can be viewed HERE on ACP's YouTube channel. This should be fun!
Your Well Being
As part of ACP's Well-Being and Professional Fulfillment initiative, ACP has launched a collection of resources aimed at helping members improve their emotional well-being. As a recognition of the unprecedented stresses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to internists and internists-in-training, ACP created the I.M. Emotional Support Hub to offer curated resources and information to protect physicians' emotional health and sustain ACP members' ability to care for those in need.
Resources include easily-accessible peer-support through the Physician Support Line and free and affordable, confidential counseling through The Emotional PPE Project and The Therapy Aid Coalition. Check out the hub for additional well-being tools and resources for individuals and organizations and to view all of ACP's Physician Well-being activities. For more information and questions, please contact acpwellbeing@acpprograms.org
Opportunities to get Involved
- “Vet” questions for Doctors Dilemma
- Request to join a committee or serve on the council
- Chapter meeting planning committee
- Volunteerism committee
- Wellness champion
- Diversity, equity and inclusion champion (DEI)
- Health and public policy committee (HPPC)
- WWAMI student internal medicine interest group (IMIG)
- Strategic planning session
To get involved contact Emily Church ecchurch73@gmail.com or Julie Lake Lake@mtaonline.net