Rhode Island Governor's Newsletter December 2019

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• In this Issue:

• From The Governor
• Doctor's Dilemma
• Advocacy Workshop
• Annual Meeting
• New Chapter Awards Process
• Welcome to the RI ACP Wellness Committee Corner
• Health and Public Policy Committee

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Kelly A McGarry, MD, FACP, ACP Governor

 

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From The Governor

Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving spending time with family and friends or just relaxing. We have been busy with Doctor's Dilemma, our Advocacy Workshop, preparing for what will be an outstanding Annual Meeting, and working on new Chapter Awards and new ways to nominate! My first six months has been rewarding, working with colleagues from across the state and creating new initiatives. The engagement of members has been much appreciated. The ACP is here to make a difference for all RI physicians and I welcome input and ideas from individuals in practice, employed by health systems, specialists in general internal medicine as well as subspecialties, and both in and out of the hospital. Please forward any ideas you have to help make our Chapter better. See below for details on some of recent and upcoming activities.

I hope you have fabulous holidays and find some time to relax and re-energize! My very best wishes to you for a happy and healthy 2020!

Kelly McGarry

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Doctor's Dilemma

Congratulations to Roger Williams Hospital, Winners of Doctor's Dilemma! They will be traveling to represent RI at the National Competition this spring in Los Angeles, CA.

L-R: John Martino, MD, Brett Brownlee, MD, Vincent Armenio, MD, FACP, Program Director and Yashvin Onkarappa Mangala, MD

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Advocacy Workshop

The RI Chapter received Chapter Development Funds to hold an Advocacy Workshop for all Internal Medicine Residencies in our state. Dr. Megha Garg (Assistant Professor, UCSF), Dr. Zoe Tseng (co-Chair, HPPC Committee, MA Chapter), and our own Dr. Pam Egan (Chair, RI HPPC Committee, Assistant Professor, Brown) led an interactive workshop at Brown Medical School designed to enable all residency programs across our state to create their own Advocacy Curricula with the goal of teaching all residents about the important role that physicians play in advocacy at a state and national level. The next day they visited residents at Kent Hospital and Roger Williams Medical Center to further energize the residents to advocacy work!

L-R: Dr. Zoe Tseng, Dr. Pam Egan and Dr. Megha Garg

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Annual Meeting

Thanks to our co-directors, Drs. Ross Hilliard, Kwame Dapaah-Afriyie, and Sarita Warrier, for putting together what I know will be an educational and invigorating annual meeting. Thanks also to the members who participated in our planning workshop.

RI ACP Annual Meeting Planning Committee

Susan Andrews, MD

Stephanie Catanese, MD, FACP

Audrey Kupchan, MD, FACP

Vidya Gopinath, MD

Kelly McGarry, MD, FACP

Yul D. Ejnes, MD, MACP

Rebekah Gardner, MD, FACP

Drew E. Nagle, MD

Ankur Shah, MD

Fred J. Schiffman, MD, MACP

Mariah Stump, MD, MPH, FACP

The Annual Meeting will be held on March 18, 2020, please save the date. It will again be held at the Alpert Medical School, registration will be open soon!

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New Chapter Awards Process

Thanks to our newly formed Chapter Awards Committee:

Tom Bledsoe, MD, FACP

James Crowley, MD, FACP

Nishi Dedania, MD

Alex Diaz de Villalvilla, MD

Audrey Kupchan, MD, FACP

Michelle Lally, MD

Kelly McGarry, MD, FACP

Donald Rice, MD

Harlan Rich, MD, FACP

Sundaresan Sambandam, MD

Fred Schiffman, MD, MACP

Ankur Shah, MD

for coming up with a new nominations process and several new awards, including Resident/Fellow Leadership Award, Woman Physician of the Year, and a Mentorship Award. There are many physicians in our community who deserve recognition! We hope these new awards allow recognition of deserving individuals.

Click here to review award details and consider nominating a deserving individual.

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Welcome to the RI ACP Wellness Committee Corner

Under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Jeremiah, our Wellness Committee Chair, the committee of:

Stephanie Catanese, MD, FACP

Yul D. Ejnes, MD, MACP

Peter Hollmann, MD, FACP

Geetika Gupta, MD

Audrey Kupchan, MD, FACP

Kelly McGarry, MD, FACP

Laura Ofstead, MD

Lauren Schlanger, MD, FACP

developed a mission statement to reflect our goals for the Chapter's wellness initiatives:

The mission of the Rhode Island ACP chapter wellness committee is to foster member well-being by promoting social interaction and engagement to mitigate the isolation that occurs in the practice of medicine. We investigate factors related to burn out and reduced job satisfaction and we share practices and system changes which promote resilience and enhanced job satisfaction amongst our members. Locally and nationally, we advocate for policy changes that seek to enhance and promote physician career satisfaction.

A few things to know:

1. Look out for an upcoming survey to assess the wellness needs of our physicians across our state. The information obtained will be used to personalize the wellness work of the committee in order to meet the needs of all our members.
2. Please consider sharing what you have learned. If you have an efficiency pearl or an EHR workaround that would help others, please email it to: Jennifer_jeremiah@brown.edu for publication in the next Governor's newsletter Wellness Committee Corner.
3. Check out ACP's web page for wellness ideas and to learn what ACP is doing for. You will find tools and resources provided by ACP to fight physician burnout.
4. Two January Webinars related to Wellness Issues

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Health and Public Policy Committee

The next HPPC Meeting will be held on February 5, 2020 at 6:30 pm.

To do/learn more about advocacy:

• The Legislative Action Center houses a lot of the Action Items.

The link for “Take Action lets members know what the current issues are, such as writing to representatives to encourage them to support and uphold the Medicare fee changes:

• Save the Date: State Health Policy Networking Webinar – Wednesday, January 29, 2020.
• Key Issues of Advocacy Engagement

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