I am also eagerly anticipating the nationally recognized speakers. We invited the best speakers we know from both subspecialty backgrounds and fellow hospitalists, and given the Orlando location, we tried to feature the best speakers from the Southeast. Finally, I am looking forward to the diversity of topics. The committee really thought broadly about relevant topics to today’s practicing hospitalists.
What will be new and different for attendees at HM18 in comparison to previous annual conferences?
There are many new things this year. Given the field of hospital medicine is now more than 20 years old, the committee thought it was important to focus on career development – not just for new hospitalists, but midcareer hospitalists as well. How do you make hospital medicine a lifelong, enjoyable, and engaging career? To explore and answer these questions, the Annual Conference Committee created several new tracks for HM18.
We created a Seasoning Your Career track that offers ideas on how to change your role midcareer – how to advance to a leadership position, how to use emotional intelligence to achieve success, how to prevent burnout, and, best of all, how to consider and change your hospitalist group’s work schedule, which rules our lives and our families’ lives. We also added financial planning advice to help you prepare for retirement.
Another new track at HM18 is the Career Development Workshops track, which includes a diversity of workshops meant to help build leadership skills, develop presentation/communication skills, encourage peers to give each other feedback, promote women in hospital medicine, prevent burnout, and turn ideas into clinical research. The Medical Education track also has a session on how to break into educational roles, especially if you want to expand your career into a leadership position in medical education.