Back to the Furture Past RIV winners talk about what the recognition meant for their careers By Larry Beresford
Twylla Tassava, MD
After winning SHM’s annual Research, Innovations, and Clinical Vignettes (RIV) scientific abstract and poster competition for an abstract illustrating a program that promoted flu vaccinations for families of neonatal patients, Shetal Shah, MD, FAAP, became a leading advocate for two laws mandating that New York hospitals offer vaccinations to families.
A poster that described a VTE prevention program led Gregory Maynard, MD, MSc, SFHM, to join SHM’s VTE Prevention Collaborative and, eventually, to become senior vice president of the society’s Center for Hospital Innovation and Improvement.
A prize-winning innovations poster for improving team communication by Vineet Chopra, MD, MS, FACP, FHM, and colleagues later took off as a new technology company.
Leonard Feldman, MD, FAAP, SFHM, won for a poster that explained online CME curriculum for hospitalists as consultants; the curriculum now resides on SHM’s website.
The evidence is clear: RIV abstracts are a vital part of hospital medicine.
Nearly 800 abstracts were submitted for HM13.
Awards are given in three categories:
- Research posters report clinical or basic science data, systematically review a clinical problem, or address efficiency, cost, or method of health-care delivery or medical decision-making;
- Innovations posters describe an existing innovative program in hospital medicine, often with preliminary data; and
- Clinical vignettes, either adult or pediatric, report on one or more cases illustrating a new disease entity, a prominent or unusual feature of an established disease, or an area of clinical controversy.
The Hospitalist asked 11 past RIV winners what the poster contest meant to their careers. Some added more data and analysis and went on to be published in such medical journals as the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Some used the recognition to launch or boost research-oriented careers; others saw their careers go in different directions.
“Winning a national poster competition gives you the confidence to continue to pursue your interest and take it to a higher level, like successfully competing for funding and publishing your line of inquiry,” says hospitalist and researcher Vineet Arora, MD, MPP, FHM, of the University of Chicago, who won the 2006 RIV research competition. “Sometimes, presenting posters can be lonely, but at SHM, you get a lot of traffic. You get a chance to practice your spiel, communicating science and research in a very concise way, which is an important skill to have.”
David Metzger, MD, PhD, also from the University of Chicago, who won the RIV research award in 2005, says recognition is a big deal, but “one of the biggest values of the RIV competition is just getting information out to colleagues, with the opportunity to talk with your peers. That’s the real prize.
“I’ve been involved in presenting posters at SHM every year that the society has been in existence,” he says. “I’ve met so many people and talked about what they’re doing. That’s what a medical society should do—bring people together like this.”
Title: Administrator, academic consult service; teaching staff physician
Institution: Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ypsilanti, Mich.
Year: 2008
RIV: “A Case of Salty Voluminous Urine” (clinical vignette)
Dr. Tassava was honored two years in a row for topics drawn from her experience as a hospitalist working in the surgical ICU. Her HM08 entry won top poster, and her HM09 poster, “Permissive Hypernatremia: Co-Management of Intracranial Pressure in a Patient with Diabetes Insipidus,” was selected for an oral presentation.