Internal Medicine Message From the Chair

While it seems that this year’s spring weather is arriving in short bursts, spring academic activities are definitely in full swing. In this newsletter, you will learn who is receiving departmental research awards (presented at June 7th Grand Rounds) and other awards such as the Student Senate Outstanding Teacher. There are many academic spring meetings and you will learn of our participation in the national meeting of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM), and Endocrine Society. No doubt there are several other noteworthy items related to other national meetings so be sure to share those with Shannon Thomsen so we can capture them in a future newsletter!
 
We welcome faculty to new roles (Dr. Chad Vokoun as the Acting Section Chief of Hospital Medicine and Medical Director for NM Hospital Medicine) and new staff to the department. There have been some exciting new publications, such as Dr. Sue Swindells’ recent New England Journal article, and important research is being launched in new grants.
 
I find it easy to get very caught up in the seemingly urgent activities of each day and not allot enough time to what brings the most joy out of life. Away from work and separate from family relationships, I have found involvement in a broad-based community organizing organization to nurture me. I recently saw an article that reminded me that principles of community organizing are very relevant to the academic medicine work place. Community organizing stresses intentional one-on-one conversations to better understand others’ stories, small group meetings to help distill what is most important in a community shaped by individuals’ stories, and research to target next steps that can impact change. Community organizing often targets changes in public policy or procedures to benefit the common good.  In the work place, those one-on-one conversations and small group meetings can lead to researching strategies that impact the processes influencing the well-being of our patients, our students and trainees, faculty and staff. This reminds me that making the time for periodic one-on-one conversations to better understand another’s perspective can be really valuable in setting the priorities in our work place.
 
As we wind down one academic year and prepare to start the new one in July, I am ever grateful for the great people who make up our department of internal medicine and for the exciting possibilities that lie ahead in our educational programs, research, and patient care programs.