Category Archives: Uncategorized

Moving Away From Data Points and Back to the Patient Story

Posted on July 12, 2017 by | 3 comments
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Kathryn Freeman, MD

This past spring, I consciously moved away from learning clinical skills and spent time at two conferences: the National Medical Legal Partnership Conference, and the Family Medicine Advocacy Summit. There, instead of learning about medicine, I learned about stories.

When I reflect on what I learned in medical school, it was all about taking a patient story and converting it into a formal presentation. We spend years training our residents to boil down a patient’s history into discrete facts in a defined structure, using medical terminology to convey a message that only other physicians can understand. But that only allows us to communicate with each other, not with the world around us, or with the people, partners, groups, and leaders who have the potential to make a larger impact our patients’ health.

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Posted in Advocacy, Education, Family Medicine Stories, Residency, Uncategorized

Advice From a Student: How to Recruit Medical Students into Family Medicine During Rotation

Posted on June 27, 2017 by | 8 comments

Medical students, especially those with little exposure to careers in medicine, have great difficulty imagining a career in medicine other than what they see and experience through their rotations.

AMooreSTFM

Antoinette Moore, 4th-Year Medical Student

And shortly after rotations, they are asked to make choices that place their careers on certain trajectories. And while the scope of someone’s ideal practice will grow and change, the choice of specialty defines us in a way that is undeniably powerful and far reaching into our professional careers.

As I wrap up my third year of medical school, what has become apparent to me is that there are two often unnoticed—and often under-promoted—qualities that influence whether a student chooses one specialty over another.

These two qualities are physical and metaphysical. Physical describes the more brick and mortar/billable procedure/patient population aspects students are exposed to during rotations, such as “Is the preceptorship in a small town or a large urban setting?” and “Does this rotation expose students to a wide variety of patient presentations, procedures, and demographics?” The metaphysical is a bit harder to quantify but importantly demonstrates how happy employees are with their chosen line of work. It speaks to the culture of the rotation environment, which, to the student, serves as a representation of the profession as a whole.

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Posted in Education, Family Medicine Stories, Medical School, Precepting, Uncategorized

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To My Fellow Introverts at STFM Conferences

Posted on May 17, 2017 by | 4 comments
2016 Sonya Shipley Head Shot

Sonya Shipley, MD

Furtive glance on the elevator whispers, “I see you.  I know you.  I am you, and I am glad that you are here.” Your mutual silence is comforting to my decidedly stimulated brain.  I see you artfully arranged on strategically placed couches with your noise canceling headphones in place. I am, admittedly, a little envious of your first claim of right to the couch. Though there is ample room for another body, I dare not interrupt your solitude.  I respect your space; your battery is recharging.

The elephant in the room, albeit an often very quiet elephant, is the introvert. But, I see you soaking in the new angles of old information and familiar angles of the new.  I hear your thoughtful probing of the presenters, and I can see the speed of your mind formulating unheard of combinations of inquiry. I see your new ideas, your new projects, your new plans; your newness. I, too, have claimed this newness.  This new invigoration, this new energy, this new resolve, this new commitment. The kind of newness that is only barely adequately described by sentence fragments because it defies and even mocks correct grammar and syntax.  It just IS.  And it IS comfortable in its own skin & its own presence.

We are basking in this new. We have quietly recommitted ourselves to this weighty mission and the ideals of family medicine. We are doing whatever it takes. We are stepping out of our comfort zones—putting ourselves out there. We are taking to heart the lessons of the day.  

To the presenters of the writing session, I heard you. We all heard you. I am bettered by your take home message; someone somewhere always wants to listen—needs to hear.

To my fellow introverts, thank you for bringing your offerings to the table. Thank you for the caffeine you ingested and the brief sojourns into the sunshine and the corners that you occupied in the name of recharging. Though I do not know all of your names, I saw you. I know that you will all go home and earn Tomatoes (especially, my new east coast friend who inspired this turn of phrase). Tomatoes, you say?  Yes, Tomatoes.  From the grateful patients who will bring you the work of their hands—these treasures born of gratitude—for the work that you will do.

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Posted in Uncategorized