Welcome to Hospital Medicine 2018, the second-happiest place in Orlando – at least for hospitalists who want to be in the know.
The 2018 education program is a ride through the diverse world of hospital medicine, with sessions ranging from clinical updates to cutting-edge techniques, communication tools, building a satisfying career, and finding your way through tangles of red tape and policy.
Two tracks new for 2018 hone in on managing alternative providers and palliative care.
The half-day NP/PA track (beginning April 11 at 7:30 a.m.) recognizes these practitioners for their crucial roles in hospital medicine care delivery. Among the discussions aimed at hospitalists: Best practices in provider utilization and collaboration; supervision vs. collaboration; and challenging situations when working with mid-level providers.
The palliative care track (also a half day, starting April 11 at 10 a.m.) recognizes the crucial role hospitalists play in optimizing end-of-life care. Sessions will help hospitalists understand that role, and guide them in managing pain and other symptoms commonly encountered during this transitional time.
As for the rest of the meeting, picking favorites is as tough as picking between Disney’s Big Thunder Railroad and Splash Mountain, said HM18 course director Dustin Smith, MD, SFHM, of Emory University, Atlanta. “We feel strongly that all offerings at the conference are ‘must-sees,’ and it’s why we offer repeat sessions of what we predict will be the most popular talks overall. Since there are so many good sessions competing for attendees at the same time, we wanted to make sure we offered these repeat sessions of common, high-yield clinical topics.”
The Repeated Sessions track is set for April 10, and runs a full day. The track includes these dynamic sessions:
- Updates in congestive heart failure: Pablo Quintero, MD; 11-11:40 a.m.
- He-who-shall-not-be-named: Updates in sepsis and critical care: Patricia Kritek, MD, EdM; 11:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
- Not true love’s kiss? Updates in infectious disease: John Sanders, MD, MPHTM; 2:50-3:30 p.m.
- Updates in acute coronary syndrome: Jeff Trost, MD; 3:40-4:20 p.m.
- Waiting in line for ‘It’s a Small World’ and other things we do for no reason: Tony Breu, MD, FHM; 4:30-5:10 p.m.
- “The Mad Hatter”: Updates in delirium: Ethan Cumbler, MD, FHM; 5:20-6:00 p.m.
In addition to the sepsis update in the Repeated Sessions track, Dr. Smith noted that sepsis will also be the topic of a pre-course offering (April 8, 8:15 a.m.-4:50 p.m.). “The topic of sepsis remains a hot item in hospital medicine,” he said.
“I’d also like to highlight a new pre-course offering this year – ‘Keep your finger on the pulse: Cardiology update for the hospitalist’ (April 8, 8:30 a.m.-4:50 p.m.),” he said. “Many of our pre-course offerings are carry-overs from previous years due to ongoing great success with the individual pre-courses themselves. Although we have had a cardiology pre-course in our lineup of offerings in the past, we chose to offer a freshly redesigned pre-course in cardiology this year to round out the lineup of pre-course offerings and to keep things fresh.”
The “Stump the attentive (not absent-minded) professor” sessions on clinical unknowns in the Diagnostics Reasoning track are also must-sees, Dr. Smith said. So much so, that SHM is offering two of them this year (April 9, 2:00-2:40 p.m.; 3:45-4:25 p.m.).
Dr. Smith’s codirector Kathleen Finn, MD, MPhil, SFHM, also has a few personal favorites on the education program.
“I know the talks in the ‘Seasoning your career track’ will be great,” said Dr. Finn, a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “This new track provides mid-career hospitalists (and new hospitalists) ideas in how to continue to make their career enjoyable and stimulating. It includes talks on how to advance in a leadership position, use emotional intelligence to achieve success, prevent burnout or design your groups schedule so it doesn’t rule your life.”
The board weighs in
The 2018 HM18 line-up garnered an enthusiastic thumbs-up from The Hospitalist’s editorial advisory board. We polled these experts for their 2018 “must-see” sessions, and they responded with a selection that spans the meeting’s wide-ranging offerings.
1. Leadership essentials for success in hospital medicine (April 9, 10:35 a.m.-12:05 p.m.)
Amit Vashist, MD, MBA, FHM, system chair, hospitalist division, Mountain State Health Alliance, Virginia/Tennessee, is especially excited about this session, intended to help hospitalists assume leadership roles.
“Given the ever-expanding footprint of hospitalists inside the hospitals and beyond, and the way they are being called upon to be the drivers of an increasingly value-based care, I believe it is imperative for every hospitalist provider – regardless of being in a leadership role or not – to have a fundamental understanding of the leadership nuances pertaining specifically to hospital medicine in order to optimally leverage their skill set to drive transformational changes in the health care arena,” he said. “This primer on leadership essentials should pique the interest of the hospitalists further towards developing a deeper appreciation of some of the leadership dimensions must-haves in the realm of hospital medicine.”
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