NaBloPoMo 2019

Are you required to do continuing education for your work?

Since 2013, the Illinois Chapter of the American College of Physicians has run a weekly internal medicine board review webinar, MKSAP Live Online Study Hall.  We use questions that ACP publishes through the Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program, covering topics in general medicine and its subspecialties, including cardiology, pulmonary, infectious diseases, and rheumatology.  Every Tuesday night at 8pm Central time, two of us moderators and one webinar organizer get online and review about 14 questions, SAT-style.  We interact with audience members through a chat function on GoToWebinar, and we poll some of the questions each session.

I love this program for multiple reasons.

First, I was there when it started.  Gathered around then Governor Dr. Marie Brown’s dining room table, a handful of local ACP members brainstormed and created what is now an international, comprehensive internal medicine board review webinar series.  After some playful, off-topic, post-prandial banter between Dr. Sean Greenhalgh and me, our colleague across the table said wryly, “I’d watch that for an hour.”  Hence the dual-moderator, morning radio DJ style webinar was born.  That was in the fall of 2012, and the Study Hall is now halfway through its third two-year cycle.

Second, I get to hang out with my doctor friends online.  Besides Marie and a couple others, I did not know any of the dozen folks involved in the project before that night at her house.  We did improv workshops at the beginning to form our team and ease our communication skills.  Since then we have all become friends—a clique, even.  We have followed kids’ graduations, births of babies and grandbabies, and some personal challenges as well, all while getting together every few weeks to talk shop for an hour online.  We have even become celebrities of sorts—first at Illinois Chapter meetings and now sometimes at ACP National, people come up to us to say how much they like the program.  We’ve become a fixture in some colleagues’ lives.  We feel pretty proud and special about that.

The best thing about the Study Hall, though, is that just in the space of one hour on a Tuesday night, I am consistently humbled by the sheer volume of knowledge there is to absorb, just in internal medicine.  This is only one specialty of the whole medical profession!  And it’s not just the volume—it’s the complexity, the context, and the ever-evolving research, diagnostic and treatment development, and guidelines.  MKSAP publishes a new set of comprehensive questions every two years, and I do not envy the writers their colossal task of keeping us all up to date.  Without fail, every session I learn something that I will use the following week in clinic.

As this month of daily posts progresses, I feel increasing awe and gratitude for all of the people and opportunities in my life.  Thanks to all my colleagues, leaders, family and friends who make this life so full and loving.