California Northern Governor's Newsletter February 2018

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Raminder S. Gill, MD, FACP, ACP Governor

Raminder S. Gill, MD, FACP, ACP Governor

My Dear ACP Colleagues,

This is first of my communications to the chapter regarding our activities in 2017 and thoughts on what is scheduled for 2018. Thanks to the tireless efforts of many individuals, our 2017 Northern California Chapter Scientific Meeting was held October 20-22, 2017 in Walnut Creek and was a success. The theme for this past year's meeting was Bring Medicine Back to the Bedside. While we hope many of you can attend our annual meeting, we realize that may not always be possible. As ACP allows us to post the presentations on our chapter website, that will be done from now on. Almost all of the presentations given that weekend can be found via our chapter website.

The meeting began Friday afternoon with two American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Medical Knowledge modules presented in live group learning sessions, Geriatric Medicine and Hospice/Palliative Care Medicine. The next day had a broad range of topics including from the areas of neurology (ischemic stroke), endocrinology (non-insulin care in diabetes), and pain management (focus on hospitalized patients). Our focus was on clinical medicine, yet we had a special presentation by Jann Murray-Garcia, MD, MPH regarding concepts related to “cultural humility” a term that she helped to coin with a colleague. By appreciating possible unconscious bias and interrupting “unspoken social scripts” we may be able to enhance the care of all of our patients with interruption of these very same scripts.

Dr. Faith Fitzgerald

Our keynote speaker was Faith Fitzgerald, MACP, who gave an inspiring talk entitled “Patient-Centered Medicine” which touched on how technology and other factors have changed the practice of medicine. Dr. Fitzgerald is concerned we spend less time with patients now than in the past with the four main themes that drive care away from the patient being: efficiency, economics, environment, evaluation. She encouraged us to return to the patients and implored us to “resist and sabotage any systems that separate doctors from the patients.” She ended by reminding us “The greatest act of inhumanity is treating real human beings as unimportant or expendable,” and that is truly bad medicine.

Paul Aronowitz, MD, MACP joined us once again together with Tamsin Levy to challenge Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD with another edition of their Images in Medicine session. Mystery images are projected on the screen to the audience and Dr. Dhaliwal describes his thought process in determining the significance of the findings during this live clinical problem-solving session. It should be noted that Dr. Aronowitz is a newly elected Master of ACP and he is to be commended for his achievements in medicine leading up to this well-deserved honor.

A staple of our Saturday program are the poster presentations of medical students and internal medicine residents. Due to the hard work of many individuals, we had more than 150 posters submitted, and they are to be commended for their efforts. A thank you is given to the numerous individuals for the dedicated efforts, as members of our judging staff, for taking time out of their day to help. I wish to extend a special thanks to Kathleen Kenny, MD, FACP and Nawal Atwan-Johansen, MD, FACP for their years of contributing to organizing our poster judging. We could always use more judges so please let me know if you are interested.

During the noon hour we had concurrent sessions for the residents/medical students and other attendees. The residents/medical students had a talk on issues related to contracts. The other lunch session included a chapter Awards Luncheon along with an update on lobbying activities at the state and national level. Robert (Bob) Doherty, Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs and Public Policy from the Washington, DC office of ACP joined us to share his insights on issues that will impact physicians and patients. As he has had an extended career in and around Washington, DC it is clear that Bob has gained a tremendous perspective with regard to healthcare associated issues. For those using Twitter, Bob can be followed at: @BobDohertyACP and he has a blog on the Internet that can be found online .

Saturday ended with an exciting Doctor's Dilemma. This is a competition, following the theme of TV program Jeopardy, in which teams representing our area internal medicine residency programs answer challenging questions to earn points. In a break, during Doctor's Dilemma, the winners of our poster competition were announced and are detailed below together with Doctor's Dilemma winning team. Once again, Eugene Lee, MD, FACP led the program, and his continued commitment to Doctor's Dilemma is appreciated.

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Our program ended on Sunday with workshops as well as a General Medicine Update in between the two exam focused sessions. How better to bring medicine back to the bedside than to focus on physical examination. We started the morning with Knee and Shoulder exam and ended with Hip and Back. The Sunday sessions would not have been possible without the dedication of Baldeep Singh, MD, FACP in helping to facilitate all of the educational activities for this day together with his colleagues from Stanford.  This year we plan to integrate what have historically been Sunday morning workshops into the Saturday programming.

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The new year has started, and we are focused on organizing the 2018 Northern California Chapter Scientific Meeting which will be held November 2-3, 2018 at the Santa Clara Marriott Hotel. A conscious effort was made to avoid conflicting with other medical meetings. It was also decided that the meeting will be conducted over two days, Friday and Saturday, rather than three as has been done in the past. Further details with regards to the organization of the meeting will follow in a subsequent newsletter. Please place this date on your calendar and we hope you can join us!

 


Abstract winners and Doctor's Dilemma team

Congratulations to the following abstract winners and Doctor's Dilemma team who will represent our chapter at the 2018 Internal Medicine Meeting in New Orleans, LA, April 19-21, 2018.

Residents:

Research – Rachita Navara, MD, Stanford

Clinical Vignette – David Ly, MD, California Pacific Med Center

Quality Improvement – Paniz Vafaei, MD, Kaiser Oakland

Student: Jeffrey Duong, UC Davis

Doctor's Dilemma Team

Congratulations for team from California Pacific Medical Center who will represent our chapter at the Doctor's Dilemma competition at the 2018 IM Meeting in New Orleans: Drs. Elizabeth Kim, Baijia Jiang, and Andrew Wong.

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Updated Information on MOC

Review the updated information that ACP has created to apprise members of ABIM guidelines regarding Maintenance of Certification (MOC) as well as ACP resources and products that can help you obtain MOC points. 

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Call for Fall 2018 Board of Governors Resolutions

Are you concerned about a practice or clinical issue or have an idea you'd like to suggest? If so, you might 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. Participating in the Board of Governors resolutions process provides the ACP grassroots member a voice and allows you to shape College policy that impacts the practice of internal medicine. When drafting a resolution, don't forget to consider how well it fits within ACP's Mission and Goals. In addition, be sure to use the College's 2017-2018 Priority Initiatives to guide you when proposing a resolution topic.

Not sure how to begin drafting a resolution? Researching the College's position on an issue can give you a start. Visit the ACP Online homepage and click the Advocacy link in the right-hand, top margin to access ACP policy positions, read about recent ACP advocacy activities, or search ACP's library of policies and recommendations. Visit the chapter website, too, and click the link under “Advocacy” to access Electronic Resolutions System (ERS) where you can search past or proposed resolutions. A copy of the resolutions process is available on the ERS which furnishes more details on formatting resolutions, as well the process for submission, review, and approval.

Members must submit resolutions to their Governor and/or chapter council. A resolution becomes a resolution of the chapter once the chapter council approves it. If effecting change interests you, the deadline for submitting new resolutions to be heard at the Fall 2018 Board of Governors Meeting is March 26, 2018. Share your good idea with us. Draft a resolution.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Sacramento Legislative Day – February 20 & 21, 2018

Annual Internal Medicine 2018

April 19 - April 21, 2018 in New Orleans, LA

More information

Leadership Day on Capitol Hill

May 22 & 23, 2018

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