Med students, residents: Inspiration and invigoration await you at Academy conferences

By Katie Patterson, M.D., Chair, TAFP Section on Resident Physicians

Each year I look back on conferences that I have attended and think about what makes them successful. The National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students in Kansas City has been one of my favorite conferences since I was in medical school. I leave this conference every year with renewed vigor for family medicine. Since I entered residency and moved to Texas, I have been privileged to be a part of TAFP and its yearly resident and student conference. Over the past three years, I have watched the conference grow and mature into a very successful event.

During my intern year, the conference was new and exciting. I met residents from programs all over the state of Texas. We discussed barriers to getting involved on the state level of the Academy. We also discussed how to present a united front to the medical students attending the conference and support family medicine as a whole, not our own individual residency programs. This was a tremendous step forward for the resident section, and from this plan emerged a new and exciting component to our annual meeting, the procedures fair.

Last year our procedures fair was a success. Programs displayed procedures ranging from skin excision to joint injections to episiotomy repair. Students spent the full time rotating between the stations, and it was a highly rated part of our conference. We decided to allow more time for the procedures fair in 2006. Not only did we have record-breaking numbers of conference attendees this year, but our procedures fair grew by leaps and bounds. We had more programs than the room could hold, and more medical students than we could have imagined.

As I entered the welcoming lecture this year, I encountered a group of medical students from Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Worth. I introduced myself and asked them why they had decided to attend the conference this year. The unanimous response I received: because of the procedures fair.

For some medical students, the procedures fair is their first opportunity to practice “real medicine.” The first two years of medical school seem so long ago for residents, and even longer for practicing physicians. We quickly forget how long it took for us to actually lay hands on patients or do any procedures. This small procedures fair showcases the skills that a family physician, not an individual residency program, can perform. It promotes our specialty in ways that no interview or recruiting fair can even come close.

As I look back on TAFP’s Student and Resident Conference, I know that it was a great success, a success created by a group of residents who wanted to promote the specialty of family medicine. Thank you for letting me be a part of this amazing family.

Katie Patterson, M.D., is a family medicine resident at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial.