Thomas, who directs the Mercy Medical Group’s hospitalist program in Sacramento, and I had been good friends in medical school but found our friendship sidetracked by the grind of residency training at different institutions. I had not seen or heard from him in seven years. I later stumbled upon another medical school colleague and quite enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect with such important figures from my past.
Over lunch I attended my first SHM research committee meeting. Not knowing what to expect, I found a group of early-career hospitalists interested in developing academic careers and a burgeoning SHM research infrastructure. I also met Andy Auerbach, MD, at the time a slightly younger but no less talented clinician-researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Over the years I’ve had the chance to get to know Andy much better and have found him an inspiration, a collaborator, and an enjoyable person to reconnect with whenever serendipity offers us the chance.
Toward the end of the first day’s sessions I attended an innovations workshop that featured a presentation of an online billing tool I thought might be the answer to a research question that I had. Unbeknownst to me the presenter was Eric Siegal, MD, who had graduated from my residency the year before I started and had been a passing acquaintance.
In the end, the presentation was not the answer to my question. But connecting with Eric, now a regional director at Cogent Healthcare, was not only pleasurable but has led to a burgeoning professional bond and personal friendship that has resulted in a couple of co-written publications, hikes through the mountains of Montana, and too numerous to count phone calls seeking professional advice.
That evening I presented my data to my peers at the abstract session and found the feedback to be interesting and enlightening. I also found it another opportunity to discover like-minded people with common interests.
One of them was Ken Epstein, MD, with IPC-The Hospitalist Company. It turned out that Ken had access to data that could answer the research question that had brought me to the innovations session earlier in the day.
Since this encounter, Ken and I have published the answer to our research question and formed a friendship and collaboration that continues to grow today.
While I didn’t recognize it at the time, that span of 24 hours in early April 2003 was arguably the most important and productive day of my working career. I reconnected with old friends, developed new professional acquaintances, and, most important, forged several new and lasting friendships.
As I ready myself for another annual meeting in San Diego I excitedly ponder the opportunities that await me—not least of which is another go in the Gaslamp Quarter! TH
Dr. Glasheen is associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver, where he serves as director of the Hospital Medicine Program and the Hospitalist Training Program, and as associate program director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program.