In our chapter, we also cycle leadership each year, using a “see one, do one, teach one” approach with our vice president-elect, president, and immediate past president to ensure proper development and continuity.
Moving forward, we are trying to reach out to medical students on a more regular basis. If you’re in your third year of medical school, it’s beneficial to start talking informally to hospitalists from multiple organizations in the state and get a feel for what a career in hospital medicine is like. How amazing would it be to walk in and interview for residency with a person you had dinner with a few months ago?
Q: SHM’s Board of Directors recently approved a Chapter Development Fund to support innovative initiatives that drive engagement on a local level. Explain the potential impact you see this having on chapters and, more broadly, SHM’s membership and hospital medicine.
A: Since our chapter’s inception, we have been able to expand our reach and stream our content to other parts of the state on the Internet. Part of the reason we have been able to do this is due to support from a Chapter Development Fund recently approved by SHM’s Board of Directors. As a result, we have turned our Southern Michigan Chapter into a statewide chapter with virtual sites. At the last meeting, we had over 75 attendees between our physical site and our “satellite site” in Michigan.
Our next project is to apply for funding to provide first- and second-year residents with free membership for a year through our chapter to expose them to the resources SHM has available to them and get their foot in the door with the organization. At a recent co-sponsored statewide meeting with the American College of Physicians, we were able to sign up 20 residents as new members of SHM, and our chapter paid their dues as an investment into our specialty.
Q: Any closing thoughts?
A: If there’s one thing I haven’t yet shared that I feel quite passionately about, it’s that SHM has such a robust library of educational resources that all hospitalists should be aware of, especially SHM’s annual meeting. It’s extraordinarily clinical and features a sizeable amount of content for grassroots clinicians and hospital leaders, including the best speakers in the field. On top of the educational components, the networking possibilities with hospitalists across the country make the annual meeting a prime example of the value SHM offers.
I’ve also been fortunate to have been involved with developing enduring materials on SHM’s Learning Portal, some of which are available without cost due to grant funding. The fact that SHM has pursued this funding and made some of these resources available to hospitalists outside of SHM’s membership embodies the organization’s mission of not only teaching doctors how to take better care of patients but helping patients get better—one of many reasons I am proud to be an active member. TH