Sports Medicine Workshop: On Field Emergencies

Hope you had a good weekend! You are invited to our first Sports Medicine Workshop of the year -- limited to the first 20 RSVPs. Look out for the sign up email in your inbox soon.

• Who: Everyone!
• What: What is Sports Medicine? Introduction to On Field Emergencies! Dr. Alysia Green will be discussing the field of Sports Medicine. She will also be teaching us how to handle on field emergencies and how to spine board an athlete/patient!
• When: Thursday (8/27) 5:30pm (will end no later than 7:30pm)
• Where: L-301
• Why: Learn about sports medicine, practice spine boarding on each other, meet first and second years, and eat snacks!

We will be having plenty more workshops in the future! Check out the Events Calendar at the top of our blog.

Contact Info from the Lunch Panel

Thanks so much for coming to FMIG's "What is Family Medicine Panel?" this past Tuesday! We had a great turnout and were really happy to see a mix of both years. To those of you who weren't able to make it but wanted to, please keep your eyes open for upcoming FMIG events.

Also, we received some great questions about Family Medicine from your feedback evaluations. We will write a whole separate post to answer as many as we can, so keep visiting the blog!

Here are the email addresses of our panelists from Tuesday who all agreed that they would be happy to respond to questions you might have:

• Dr. Markuns (International Health interests)- Jeffrey.Markuns@bmc.org
• Dr. Green (Sports Medicine interests)- Alysia.Green@bmc.org
• Dr. O'Brien (Ob-Gyn/Rural health interests)- michlynn@bu.edu or Michelle.OBrien@bmc.org
• Anthony Lim (BUSM IV) - alim@bu.edu
• Christopher Simons (BUSM IV)- simonsch@bu.edu

Finally, for those of you who approached Dr. Markuns after the panel and were interested in possible international health opportunities, he has kindly provided the following contact:

LeBoHA program
Libby Cunningham is the Program Coordinator (ecunning@bu.edu)
Dr.Markuns also mentioned that students should feel free to contact him directly with further questions.

Sports Medicine Workshop series!

Many of you met Dr. Alysia Green at our panel this past Monday. As you heard, Dr. Green is one of four BUMC family medicine faculty fellowship-trained in sports medicine. This year, she will continue the very successful series of FMIG Sports Medicine Workshops that started last year. Thanks, Dr. Green!

This year's workshops will all take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:30pm. Because the workshops teach hands-on skills, each workshop will be limited the first 20 students to sign up. Emails will be sent out in advance of each workshop with specific RSVP links. For those who like to plan ahead, check out the FMIG Events calendar at the top right corner of this page to see all upcoming Sports Medicine Workshop dates and topics.

*** The first workshop is next THURSDAY 8/27. Dr. Green will introduce Sports Medicine, in the context of Family Medicine, and will teach spine boarding! ***

Donna (MS2, kurowski[at]bu.edu) works closely with Dr. Green to plan these workshops throughout the year. Email her if you have any questions!

Reminder about AAFP

Remember, as students we get FREE membership to the American Academy of Family Physicians, which includes a FREE subscription to the American Family Physician Journal, a great resource even before our clerkships. Sign up for membership online!

What is Family Medicine? Lunch Panel TOMORROW!

Come to our first event of the year!

• Who: Everyone
• What: What is Family Medicine? Hear from family physicians and a 4th year student applying to family med residencies.
• When: Tuesday (8/18) 11:30am-12:30pm
• Where: L-110
• Why: Learn about the full scope of practice in family medicine, meet first and second years, and eat free PIZZA! (Hint: always better to come early when there's free food...)

Check back here next week for a recap and some photos of the event...

Back to School

To all the first year students: Welcome to BUSM! Thanks for stopping by our table at the student organizations fair last week. We enjoyed talking to all of you and sharing about family medicine and FMIG. And to the second year students: Don't forget to take the DRx quiz tonight. And welcome back!

Some of the FMIG leaders: Donna, Neetu, Lucas, and Jessica
(Not pictured: Carly, Caitlin, Erkeda)

While the first years are acquainting themselves with BUSM and each other, the second years hit the ground running with the first block of the Disease and Therapy course. But even with lectures galore, we at FMIG are working hard to plan a great year of events and opportunities for you.

Last Thursday, a group of second year students including many of the FMIG leaders volunteered at a health fair hosted by the Codman Square Health Center, a popular CCHERS site. We took blood pressures, spoke with teenagers from the community who helped to run part of the fair, and generally helped out where we could.

Volunteering at the Codman Square Health Center

Carly also discovered that many of the teens there were part of an awesome local organization called BOLD Teens committed to improving the quality of life in their Dorchester neighborhood. It was pretty cool to hear about what that group has accomplished over the years, and to see the investment and involvement they have in their community. I have to admit that I have not explored Boston enough yet, nor spent enough time in some of Boston's neighborhoods. Many of the family medicine faculty at BMC have their clinics at community health centers, and so much of their practice is getting to know the residents of that community. I hope we all have more chances this year to venture beyond the BUSM bubble!

Messages about NC09 from a newbie

So it was my first National Conference. and i LOVED it!
As someone who was interested in FM, and now even more so, I think it was a great way to meet folks with similar questions, ideas for career paths, as well as folks with different ideas that I didn't think could/would work but clearly can in FM!
The residency fair was amazing, and a bit overwhelming, but since it's FM, everyone was super nice, friendly and supportive of what I was interested in even if it was not what their school offered. As an MS3 going to the residency fair, it was helpful in sorting out which programs I wanted to try to contact for possible sub-i's, and which programs I could spend more time researching. The fair also gave a good idea of what the people are like at that residency program. The diversity, the mentality, the focus, the spirit-if you will-of the programs.
Plus one gets to tote home a boatload of goodies: brochures, pens, gadgets, bandaids, stressballs etc and most importantly, contact info!

The workshops are also quite good: useful and applicable even if you are not necessarily interested in FM. I attended the Wilderness Medicine (sponsored by our friends up in Central Maine--they're awesome!!!), Dermatology, Maternal/Childbirth/OB, Applying to Residency workshops. All were helpful in dispelling some myths, providing more ideas, and all in all being useful info to have.

Last thing: Midwest airlines has a hub through Milwaukee. BUT, they serve 2 fresh baked, piping hot chocolate chip cookies on every flight! And the Aladdin hotel (Holiday Inn) rocks the champaigne and the retro-cool and definitely wins in terms of hotels.

Tips for next year (MS4): stay the whole time, bring business cards, CV, personal statement, nicer outfit, and your best smile.

Congress of Students and Continuity of Care

At the beginning of July, I was recruited to serve as a member on a Reference Committee and began my journey in the Student Congress world of the National Conference. Concurrent to the workshops and exhibits, 50 delegates (from each state) and other interested students convened in the AAFP student government/congress Thursday thru Saturday. The congress serves two purposes: to write resolutions and to elect student leaders. I will speak here about the resolution writing process.

In the first session, a brief overview of the resolution writing process was discussed followed by discussion groups based on topic. I attended the education/career planning discussion group because one of the issues I am passionate about is continuity of care education opportunities in medical school. Looking at my school's clinical curriculum, I lament the fact that there are no continuity experiences available to students. We spend between 4-6 weeks at each site and at most see patients twice. I think that continuity experiences would allow medical students to realize the value of primary care and I spent much of my first few weeks in clerkship dreaming about a weekly continuity clinic and decided I would submit a resolution on this issues.

My resolution is as follows:

"Medical Education Continuity of Care Curriculum Recommendations 

Whereas continuity of care is an esteemed value of the practice of family medicine, and 

Whereas early exposure to continuity of care experiences during medical school may increase interest and awareness of family medicine as a potential career choice, and 

Whereas continuity of care is beneficial to patients and enhances health outcomes, be it 

Resolved, that the American Academy of Family Physicians recommend to the Council of Academic Family Medicine to explore creating curriculum recommendations to incorporate a longitudinal continuity of care experience throughout medical school such as a 4-year weekly continuity clinic."

After submitting the resolution, it went to a reference committee. Reference committees listen to testimony about the resolutions from authors and other interested parties, study proposed resolutions and provide recommendations to the congress for adoption of resolutions. They function to reduce the time needed in congress. As such, congress reviews the recommendations of reference committees and only opens individual resolutions when requested. 

In addition to submitting a resolution, I also served as a reference committee member for the first time. In this position, I listened to testimony about resolutions, reviewed the resolutions with the rest of the committee and made recommendations for the congress. It was very encouraging to see that medical students were very engaged and passionate about issues surrounding family medicine. Proposed resolutions ranged from developing sleep disorder curricula to health care reform position proposals to changes in web design in the AAFP website.

This was my first time participating in the parliamentary procedure to pass resolutions and elect student officers. I thought that it was a very enlightening experience! Also, my resolution was passed both by the reference committee and in congress, and will make its way to the Council of Academic Family Medicine (composed of FM dept chairs) where hopefully they will develop curricular recommendations and guidelines for longitudinal continuity experiences!

Massages from the AAFP

Jessica Chi (BUSM II, FMIG Leader) gets ready for her next blog at NC.

After several hours of residency booths, workshops, keynotes, and more, it's time to pay attention to our aching bodies. That's when we head to Booth #303 aka the "Comfort Station." To the four local massage therapists: my trapezius and rhomboids thank you. It's good for the healers to be healed every now and again!

Let your voice be heard! - Advocacy in Family Medicine

The afternoon session I attended today was a health advocacy open forum where students and residents discussed any advocacy they had been involved with and provided suggestions for getting started for those of us (myself included) yet to have any experience in this area.

One student said she had never really been excited about advocacy until she stepped back and looked at the big picture of how many people she could reach with her actions. She also reminded us not to be intimidated by people at your elected representative's office and to recognize the value of speaking with the staff there even if you can't speak to your senator or congressperson.

One of the residents explained his theory of advocacy through research; performing research with the intention to change policy or viewpoints on a particular subject with your outcomes. He also reminded us that advocacy was all about "making noise" wherever you can, whether it is presenting your research results to the local news station, writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or serving on a committee of the AAFP, AMSA etc.

Another student reminded us that we all already advocate for our patients everyday, and that taking the next step to advocate for groups of patients is not too big a step for a student. Taking a leadership role in your local chapter of the AAFP might be a good first step or coming to the national conference and participating in the business sessions.

Another resident provided some helpful advice for getting started, including: find an organization whose "voice" you agree with and start showing up to meetings, don't be afraid to take on tasks and make your voice heard when asked, and be on the look out for people who come into your life and inspire you to change your vision or goals.

My thought it that, as physicians, we are going to be looked upon as leaders whether we like it or not, so it behooves us to be prepared with the knowledge (and hopefully practice) of how to advocate for change when it is necessary.

A little bit about me:
I am a 4th year at BUSM applying in family medicine this year. I was one of the co-leaders of the FMIG during my second year and have been a FaMeS member since 1st year. I am currently the student director sitting on the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians' Board of Directors.

If anyone out there is looking for more information about how to get involved either at the state or national level with the AAFP, please email me at simonsch@bu.edu

Ready to Start School Again...

Blogging live from... seat 11A. Did you know that Airtran offers wifi ON THE PLANE?! Luckily, I grabbed a few free trial vouchers on my way into Kansas City so that I could blog on my flight back home to Boston.


The conference has officially ended by now, though I had to miss most of the last day due to an earlier flight. I have to admit that I did not have many expectations when I first arrived in Kansas City just a couple days ago, largely because I was still enjoying my Last Summer Vacation too much to think about medical school stuff. Now, I am so glad I went to AAFP's National Conference right before starting second year. The gears in my head are creaking back to life, and I couldn't help but send out a few emails to my fellow FMIG leaders to share the excitement!

(Excitement about FMIG, not about the upcoming exams every three weeks during second year.)

I learned so much more about what it means to be a family physician this week. And I would write more, but it's landing time at Logan!

UJC (Ultimate Journal Club)

This afternoon's "Ultimate Journal Club" was run by journal heavyweight Dr. Kurt Stange, current editor of the Annals of Family Medicine. In addition to broad discussions on running effective journal clubs and publishing research articles, we discussed his recent article, "The generalist approach" (2009), which describes the qualities of a generalist physician that are suited to meet the needs of our fragmented health system (Stange, 2009).

In the article, Dr. Stange narrates a patient story in which issues of transition of care, physician-patient relationship, and continuity of care significantly impact the life (and health) of a person in his care. He notes that the generalist is uniquely able to address these issues, and is distinguished by the following characteristics (among others):

• Humility
• Openness to diversity
• Broad knowledge base (i.e. self, family, systems, interconnectedness)
• Can see the forest through the trees
• Constant scanning and prioritizing
• Integrating & connecting
  

These characteristics act as a wrapper around the evidence-based medical practices that are part of the daily work of all physicians. Yet, while they are often undervalued, these principles of the generalist are the keys to solving issues in health care today.

The Ultimate Journal Club was yet another forum in which was highlighted the unique ability of Family Medicine Physicians to address the needs of the current crisis in health care. These same characteristics were repeated in the morning keynote by Dr. Robert Graham who clearly outlined how Family Medicine principles can help improve the cost, access, and quality of health care.

So...it seems like Family Medicine is integral to the future of medicine. Med. students, pay attention. The wind is shifting (almost daily on Capitol Hill) and we've got to be prepared for where we end up.

References

• Stange. The generalist approach. The Annals of Family Medicine (2009) vol. 7 (3) pp. 198-203
• Stange. The Problem of Fragmentation and the Need for Integrative Solutions. The Annals of Family Medicine (2009) vol. 7 (2) pp. 100-103