I arrived to my hotel room to be greeted surprisingly by a little welcome gift from the ACEP staff. It's nice to have a few perks for lecturing!
Next it was off to load my powerpoint slides into the central repository of lectures in the "Speaker Ready Room".
I think the IT support staff was getting sick of hearing my arterial doppler sound files play over and over again, as I struggled to convert the audio files from Mac to PC compatible formats...
Why do I go to these conferences?
- 10% clinical learning
- 20% networking
- 20% getting and being mentored from/by people around the country
- 20% participating in committee meetings
The last 30% is a less definable reason, but it is the crux of why I attend national conferences. The reason is what I call "motivational recharge". Much of my time is spent catching up with other emergency physicians around the country, where I'm forced to summarize what I've been up to for the past 3-12 months. Getting positive feedback and finding equally passionate collaborators really jazzes me up for the rest of the year. We push and encourage each other to accomplish great things, while also keeping each other on track with such tasks as submitting publications, getting grants, creating teaching modules, etc.
Networking
I have never been a fan of or very good at networking. Being at a large national meeting, however, is a perfect setup for chance encounters with incredible opportunities. I encourage all residents and junior faculty to attend at least one annually.
Here's an example. I just had dinner with the CDEM Academy Executive Group at the restaurant Blue Ginger last night. I randomly ran into Dr. Rick Nunez (of emedhome.com fame) at another table. He was sitting next to Dr. Joe Lex (Temple), who is finalizing plans to run an EM educational conference in Hue, Vietnam, because Vietnam is soon starting an EM residency program. Rick, who reads my blog occasionally, informed Joe that I just returned from Vietnam on a KidsCareEverywhere trip. Two minutes later, I think that I was offered to teach a workshop at the March 2010 Vietnam conference. I'm not exactly sure since I had just finished 2 glasses of wine... Will keep you posted.
Go to Vietnam EM Symposium 2010 website.
