Here are the ‘must-see’ sessions at HM18

 

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.”

 

Raj Sehgal, MD, FHM, clinical associate professor of medicine, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, pegged communication and behavioral medicine as two top picks.

2. Do you have a minute to talk? Peer-to-peer feedback (April 9, 2:50-4:20 p.m.)

“Those of us in academic settings spend a lot of time thinking about giving feedback to – and receiving feedback from – students and residents, but some of the most valuable feedback we can get is from our coworkers,” he said. “Many hospitalist groups are actively working on ways for their providers to learn from each other, such as peer observations, and this session should help in guiding some of those programs.”

3. Through the looking glass: A psychiatrist’s tricks for inpatient acute behavioral emergencies (April 10, 2:50-3:50 p.m.)

“Even for a seasoned hospitalist who never breaks a sweat treating the most acutely medically ill patients, the acutely psychotic (or agitated, or suicidal) patient can provoke significant anxiety,” Dr. Sehgal said. “The opportunity to gain another couple of ‘tools’ to add to our kit for these patients should help alleviate that feeling.”

No need for an academic meeting to be boring, said Weijen Chang, MD, SFHM, chief of pediatric hospital medicine at Baystate Children’s Hospital, Springfield, Mass.

4. Can we just stick to the “Bare Necessities”? – Things we do for no reason (April 9, 10:35-11:35 a.m.)

5. “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”: Which articles are the fairest of them all? Top pediatric updates (April 10, 5:45-6:45 p.m.)

“I’d say Dr. Lenny Feldman’s [SFHM] ‘Things we do for no reason’ is a must-see. Lenny is a master at simplifying complex issues and communicating them in an easily understood manner, and he’s quite entertaining,” Dr. Chang said. “And of course, another must-see is Top Pediatric Updates. It is entertaining, educational, and we almost got thrown out last year for bringing beer!”

Sarah Stella, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Denver Health, had a hard time choosing between the many interesting offerings. “There are quite a few great sessions this year that I’m interested in, but these are my top picks:”

6. Convert your everyday work into scholarship (and get it funded) (April 9, 1:35-2:35 p.m.)

“By virtue of their daily clinical and quality improvement/committee work, many hospitalists are well on their way to generating scholarship and funding, but are unsure how to make this conversion,” she said. “This workshop is a must for academic hospitalists working toward promotion who want a framework and tangible steps on how to get credit for what they are already doing.”

7. “Heigh ho, heigh ho,” it’s off to changing roles mid-career we go (April 11, 8:20-9:00 a.m.)

“Part of what attracts many of us to hospital medicine in the first place is the versatility of what we do and the ability to diversify based on our interests. I think this is a must-see for mid-career hospitalists like myself, or really any hospitalist dreaming of reinventing oneself.”

8. Winning hearts and minds at the bedside: Battling unconscious bias through cultural humility (April 11, 9:10-9:50 a.m.)

“Recognizing and confronting our implicit biases and how they affect patient-physician interactions is hard but incredibly important work,” Dr. Stella said. “I’ll definitely be attending this session by Aziz Ansari, DO, SFHM, to learn how to improve my relationship (and hence outcomes) with my patients.”

Harry (Hyung) Cho, MD, FHM, assistant professor of medicine and director of quality, safety, and value, division of hospital medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, had some diverse choices.

9. Being female in hospital medicine: Overcoming individual and institutional barriers in the workplace (April 9, 12:40-2:15 p.m.)

“This is a very timely, very important topic in the news and I think it will draw a lot of people,” he said.

10. Every patient tells a story and the art of diagnosis (April 9, 2:55-3:35 p.m.)

“The presenter is Dr. Lisa Sanders, who writes the ‘Diagnosis’ column for the New York Times and is a Yale University faculty member. She’s a great speaker and, incidentally, was a consultant on the TV show, ‘House, MD.’ ”

Raman Palabindala, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, thinks the most important session at HM18 is the annual update.

11. Update in hospital medicine (April 10, 1:40-2:40 p.m.)“Almost every year, this is the most high energy presentation, and I don’t think I ever missed this session, no matter who is the presenter is,” he said. “As physicians, I think we need this update every year, and this is the best single hour where we can learn a lot as a hospitalist related to hospital medicine. This is the most concentrated extract of the entire meeting. What I learned about the behind scenes efforts up to 50-100 hours of work – why not we take advantage of this session.”

 

Lonika Sood, MD, FHM of the department of hospital medicine, Aurora BayCare Medical Center, Green Bay, Wis., has a passion for both leadership and scholarship, and her choices reflect that interest.

12. How to write a winning abstract (April 11, 7:30-8:30 a.m.)

13. Leadership positions in medical education: How to break into the field (April 11, 11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.)

14. Serious illness communication: A skills-based workshop (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.)

“I would recommend all of those, especially for early-career hospitalists. And, having enjoyed and learned a lot from the workshops at HM17, I would highly recommend checking out a few that will help polish your communications – a much-needed skill in hospital medicine,” she said.

Finally, don’t just pick up another embroidered mouse ear hat on your way out. The best HM18 souvenir is taking back the knowledge you gained and – as Dr. Sood said – there’s a session for that.

15. How to bring the things you learn at SHM back to your institution: Advocating for high value care on hospital committees (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.).

For more information on the HM18 education sessions, check the latest version of the conference schedule at http://shmannualconference.org/conference-schedule.


 

 

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.”

 

Raj Sehgal, MD, FHM, clinical associate professor of medicine, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, pegged communication and behavioral medicine as two top picks.

2. Do you have a minute to talk? Peer-to-peer feedback (April 9, 2:50-4:20 p.m.)

“Those of us in academic settings spend a lot of time thinking about giving feedback to – and receiving feedback from – students and residents, but some of the most valuable feedback we can get is from our coworkers,” he said. “Many hospitalist groups are actively working on ways for their providers to learn from each other, such as peer observations, and this session should help in guiding some of those programs.”

3. Through the looking glass: A psychiatrist’s tricks for inpatient acute behavioral emergencies (April 10, 2:50-3:50 p.m.)

“Even for a seasoned hospitalist who never breaks a sweat treating the most acutely medically ill patients, the acutely psychotic (or agitated, or suicidal) patient can provoke significant anxiety,” Dr. Sehgal said. “The opportunity to gain another couple of ‘tools’ to add to our kit for these patients should help alleviate that feeling.”

No need for an academic meeting to be boring, said Weijen Chang, MD, SFHM, chief of pediatric hospital medicine at Baystate Children’s Hospital, Springfield, Mass.

4. Can we just stick to the “Bare Necessities”? – Things we do for no reason (April 9, 10:35-11:35 a.m.)

5. “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”: Which articles are the fairest of them all? Top pediatric updates (April 10, 5:45-6:45 p.m.)

“I’d say Dr. Lenny Feldman’s [SFHM] ‘Things we do for no reason’ is a must-see. Lenny is a master at simplifying complex issues and communicating them in an easily understood manner, and he’s quite entertaining,” Dr. Chang said. “And of course, another must-see is Top Pediatric Updates. It is entertaining, educational, and we almost got thrown out last year for bringing beer!”

Sarah Stella, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Denver Health, had a hard time choosing between the many interesting offerings. “There are quite a few great sessions this year that I’m interested in, but these are my top picks:”

6. Convert your everyday work into scholarship (and get it funded) (April 9, 1:35-2:35 p.m.)

“By virtue of their daily clinical and quality improvement/committee work, many hospitalists are well on their way to generating scholarship and funding, but are unsure how to make this conversion,” she said. “This workshop is a must for academic hospitalists working toward promotion who want a framework and tangible steps on how to get credit for what they are already doing.”

7. “Heigh ho, heigh ho,” it’s off to changing roles mid-career we go (April 11, 8:20-9:00 a.m.)

“Part of what attracts many of us to hospital medicine in the first place is the versatility of what we do and the ability to diversify based on our interests. I think this is a must-see for mid-career hospitalists like myself, or really any hospitalist dreaming of reinventing oneself.”

8. Winning hearts and minds at the bedside: Battling unconscious bias through cultural humility (April 11, 9:10-9:50 a.m.)

“Recognizing and confronting our implicit biases and how they affect patient-physician interactions is hard but incredibly important work,” Dr. Stella said. “I’ll definitely be attending this session by Aziz Ansari, DO, SFHM, to learn how to improve my relationship (and hence outcomes) with my patients.”

Harry (Hyung) Cho, MD, FHM, assistant professor of medicine and director of quality, safety, and value, division of hospital medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, had some diverse choices.

9. Being female in hospital medicine: Overcoming individual and institutional barriers in the workplace (April 9, 12:40-2:15 p.m.)

“This is a very timely, very important topic in the news and I think it will draw a lot of people,” he said.

10. Every patient tells a story and the art of diagnosis (April 9, 2:55-3:35 p.m.)

“The presenter is Dr. Lisa Sanders, who writes the ‘Diagnosis’ column for the New York Times and is a Yale University faculty member. She’s a great speaker and, incidentally, was a consultant on the TV show, ‘House, MD.’ ”

Raman Palabindala, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, thinks the most important session at HM18 is the annual update.

11. Update in hospital medicine (April 10, 1:40-2:40 p.m.)“Almost every year, this is the most high energy presentation, and I don’t think I ever missed this session, no matter who is the presenter is,” he said. “As physicians, I think we need this update every year, and this is the best single hour where we can learn a lot as a hospitalist related to hospital medicine. This is the most concentrated extract of the entire meeting. What I learned about the behind scenes efforts up to 50-100 hours of work – why not we take advantage of this session.”

 

Lonika Sood, MD, FHM of the department of hospital medicine, Aurora BayCare Medical Center, Green Bay, Wis., has a passion for both leadership and scholarship, and her choices reflect that interest.

12. How to write a winning abstract (April 11, 7:30-8:30 a.m.)

13. Leadership positions in medical education: How to break into the field (April 11, 11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.)

14. Serious illness communication: A skills-based workshop (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.)

“I would recommend all of those, especially for early-career hospitalists. And, having enjoyed and learned a lot from the workshops at HM17, I would highly recommend checking out a few that will help polish your communications – a much-needed skill in hospital medicine,” she said.

Finally, don’t just pick up another embroidered mouse ear hat on your way out. The best HM18 souvenir is taking back the knowledge you gained and – as Dr. Sood said – there’s a session for that.

15. How to bring the things you learn at SHM back to your institution: Advocating for high value care on hospital committees (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.).

For more information on the HM18 education sessions, check the latest version of the conference schedule at http://shmannualconference.org/conference-schedule.


 

 

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.”

 

Raj Sehgal, MD, FHM, clinical associate professor of medicine, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, pegged communication and behavioral medicine as two top picks.

2. Do you have a minute to talk? Peer-to-peer feedback (April 9, 2:50-4:20 p.m.)

“Those of us in academic settings spend a lot of time thinking about giving feedback to – and receiving feedback from – students and residents, but some of the most valuable feedback we can get is from our coworkers,” he said. “Many hospitalist groups are actively working on ways for their providers to learn from each other, such as peer observations, and this session should help in guiding some of those programs.”

3. Through the looking glass: A psychiatrist’s tricks for inpatient acute behavioral emergencies (April 10, 2:50-3:50 p.m.)

“Even for a seasoned hospitalist who never breaks a sweat treating the most acutely medically ill patients, the acutely psychotic (or agitated, or suicidal) patient can provoke significant anxiety,” Dr. Sehgal said. “The opportunity to gain another couple of ‘tools’ to add to our kit for these patients should help alleviate that feeling.”

No need for an academic meeting to be boring, said Weijen Chang, MD, SFHM, chief of pediatric hospital medicine at Baystate Children’s Hospital, Springfield, Mass.

4. Can we just stick to the “Bare Necessities”? – Things we do for no reason (April 9, 10:35-11:35 a.m.)

5. “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”: Which articles are the fairest of them all? Top pediatric updates (April 10, 5:45-6:45 p.m.)

“I’d say Dr. Lenny Feldman’s [SFHM] ‘Things we do for no reason’ is a must-see. Lenny is a master at simplifying complex issues and communicating them in an easily understood manner, and he’s quite entertaining,” Dr. Chang said. “And of course, another must-see is Top Pediatric Updates. It is entertaining, educational, and we almost got thrown out last year for bringing beer!”

Sarah Stella, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at Denver Health, had a hard time choosing between the many interesting offerings. “There are quite a few great sessions this year that I’m interested in, but these are my top picks:”

6. Convert your everyday work into scholarship (and get it funded) (April 9, 1:35-2:35 p.m.)

“By virtue of their daily clinical and quality improvement/committee work, many hospitalists are well on their way to generating scholarship and funding, but are unsure how to make this conversion,” she said. “This workshop is a must for academic hospitalists working toward promotion who want a framework and tangible steps on how to get credit for what they are already doing.”

7. “Heigh ho, heigh ho,” it’s off to changing roles mid-career we go (April 11, 8:20-9:00 a.m.)

“Part of what attracts many of us to hospital medicine in the first place is the versatility of what we do and the ability to diversify based on our interests. I think this is a must-see for mid-career hospitalists like myself, or really any hospitalist dreaming of reinventing oneself.”

8. Winning hearts and minds at the bedside: Battling unconscious bias through cultural humility (April 11, 9:10-9:50 a.m.)

“Recognizing and confronting our implicit biases and how they affect patient-physician interactions is hard but incredibly important work,” Dr. Stella said. “I’ll definitely be attending this session by Aziz Ansari, DO, SFHM, to learn how to improve my relationship (and hence outcomes) with my patients.”

Harry (Hyung) Cho, MD, FHM, assistant professor of medicine and director of quality, safety, and value, division of hospital medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, had some diverse choices.

9. Being female in hospital medicine: Overcoming individual and institutional barriers in the workplace (April 9, 12:40-2:15 p.m.)

“This is a very timely, very important topic in the news and I think it will draw a lot of people,” he said.

10. Every patient tells a story and the art of diagnosis (April 9, 2:55-3:35 p.m.)

“The presenter is Dr. Lisa Sanders, who writes the ‘Diagnosis’ column for the New York Times and is a Yale University faculty member. She’s a great speaker and, incidentally, was a consultant on the TV show, ‘House, MD.’ ”

Raman Palabindala, MD, FHM, a hospitalist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, thinks the most important session at HM18 is the annual update.

11. Update in hospital medicine (April 10, 1:40-2:40 p.m.)“Almost every year, this is the most high energy presentation, and I don’t think I ever missed this session, no matter who is the presenter is,” he said. “As physicians, I think we need this update every year, and this is the best single hour where we can learn a lot as a hospitalist related to hospital medicine. This is the most concentrated extract of the entire meeting. What I learned about the behind scenes efforts up to 50-100 hours of work – why not we take advantage of this session.”

 

Lonika Sood, MD, FHM of the department of hospital medicine, Aurora BayCare Medical Center, Green Bay, Wis., has a passion for both leadership and scholarship, and her choices reflect that interest.

12. How to write a winning abstract (April 11, 7:30-8:30 a.m.)

13. Leadership positions in medical education: How to break into the field (April 11, 11:40 a.m.-12:20 p.m.)

14. Serious illness communication: A skills-based workshop (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.)

“I would recommend all of those, especially for early-career hospitalists. And, having enjoyed and learned a lot from the workshops at HM17, I would highly recommend checking out a few that will help polish your communications – a much-needed skill in hospital medicine,” she said.

Finally, don’t just pick up another embroidered mouse ear hat on your way out. The best HM18 souvenir is taking back the knowledge you gained and – as Dr. Sood said – there’s a session for that.

15. How to bring the things you learn at SHM back to your institution: Advocating for high value care on hospital committees (April 11, 8:00-9:30 a.m.).

For more information on the HM18 education sessions, check the latest version of the conference schedule at http://shmannualconference.org/conference-schedule.