Another area where the importance of the meeting’s educational offerings becomes self-evident is the Research, Innovations, and Clinical Vignettes (RIV) poster competition. The popularity of the competition continues to grow; the review committee was deluged with 200 more submissions for HM12 than for HM11. Organizers felt that was too many posters to give attendees enough quality time with their presenters, so the session has been expanded and broken up into two sessions—one for Research and Innovations (Monday, April 2, 5-7 p.m.), and one for Vignettes (Tuesday, April 3, noon-1:30 p.m.).
“It speaks to the fact that academic hospital medicine is really growing up,” Dr. Glasheen says. “Ten years ago, we were all just trying to get enough docs to take care of patients. Now we’re getting to the point where academic hospitalists really can develop a career as a scholar and a researcher.”
An educational twist to this year’s meeting is an approach called “Pathways.” The tack is an online map of interrelated courses that may appear in different categorical tracks. For example, the “pathway” highlights for attendees how they can find sessions devoted to early-career hospitalist issues, palliative care, or transitions of care. So if two people from one institution wanted to break up the sessions by a topic, they now have an easier way.
“It affords people the opportunity to plan,” Dr. Pistoria says. “And again, it keeps us fresh. As the annual meeting committee, we’re constantly looking: What can we do what can we do differently? What can we do better?”
Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.