Past President's Message
April 2012 Newsletter Article
As I rotate off the APA Board following the PAS meeting, there were several messages I wanted to share.
APA Mentoring Activities for the 2012 PAS meeting
The APA Mentoring Activity for the 2012 PAS meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 12:00 -2:00pm. This inaugural activity, organized by the APA Mentorship Task Force, will include a dyadic speed mentoring activity followed by a small group discussion between the mentors and mentees. Following an email solicitation, over 70 mentees responded for 60 available positions and they were all assigned to one of their top 3 ranked mentorship tracks. The 60 corresponding mentors have been selected. Selection was based on interest, availability and the goal to maximize diversity in groups. Each mentee will have 10 minutes for dyadic discussion with each of 6 mentors assigned to their track. After completion of the speed mentoring activity, the entire small group (the 6 mentors and 6 mentees) will meet for 30 minutes of debriefing. One facilitator will be identified in each group to gather feedback about the process, suggestions for improvement and determine interest for development of future mentoring opportunities including peer mentoring. This speed mentoring experience will provide the opportunity to meet other APA members with similar interests, allow time for advice, career development and secrets to success. Both mentees and mentors will be provided with the respective CVs, and will exchange business cards. This session should allow mentees to network with APA leaders and have fun while doing it.
The Mentorship Tracks include:
- Career Development
- Clinical Research
- Community Based Research
- Educational Scholarship
- Health Services Research (2 groups)
- Leadership Skills
- Quality Improvement Scholarship
- Scholarship from Everyday Work
- Work-Life Balance
Thanks to the APA Mentorship Task Force Members for their help in designing and organizing this event:
Allison Ballantine, Melissa Cellini, Jennifer Christner, Donna D'Alessandro, Benard Dreyer, Glenn Flores, Maryellen Gusic, David Jaffe, Kathe Nelson, Nancy Spector, Tyler Smith, and Paul Young.
Special thanks to Allison Hartle, APA staff member who helped with the planning and coordination.
We are also sponsoring an Invited Science Presentation at the 2012 PAS meeting that should be a nice companion activity to the speed mentoring event.
The session is entitled; Mentoring Programs and Relationships: Essentials for Professional and Personal Development and will be held on Sunday, April 29 from 10:30am - 12:30 pm.
The speakers include: Janet Serwint, Nancy Spector, Benard Dreyer, Mario Cruz and Maryellen Gusic.
The objectives of the session include to:
- Understand the benefits of mentoring and articulate the essential components of an individual or institutional mentorship model.
- Describe the complementary roles and responsibilities of mentors and mentees.
- Detail methods of evaluation of mentoring programs and relationships.
Hope to see you there!
Public Policy Council Fly Day
The Public Policy Council (PPC) which includes members from AAP, APA, AMSPDC, APS and SPR organized a Fly Day on Capitol Hill on March 22nd. This provided the opportunity for members from our organization to meet with congressional and senate legislative aides on Capitol Hill to advocate for continued and sustained funding for Medicaid, pediatric research, and pediatric resident workforce issues including CHGME and loan repayment for pediatric residents who are pursuing subspecialty training. Participants in the Fly Day included:
Richard Bucciarelli, MD - University of Florida, PPC Chair and APS
Judy Aschner, MD - Vanderbilt University, APS
Ken Bromberg, MD - The Brooklyn Hospital Center/Weill Medical College of Cornell, SPR
Paul Chung, MD - UCLA/RAND, APA
Dave Clark, MD - Albany Medical Center, AMSPDC
Tom Green, MD - Children's Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University, SPR
Janet Serwint, MD - Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, APA
Bonnie Stanton, MD - Wayne State University, AMSPDC
Mark Del Monte, JD - AAP Department of Federal Affairs
James Baumberger - AAP Department of Federal Affairs
Becca Davison - AAP Department of Federal Affairs
Pediatric residents who participated included:
David Myles, MD - Johns Hopkins
Tina Navidi, MD - Johns Hopkins
Natalie Spicyn, MD - Johns Hopkins
Justin Miyomoto - University of California - San Francisco
This was a wonderful opportunity to meet with the legislative aides and also to include pediatric residents in the process. The residents did a fabulous job and I believe they will probably be among our future advocacy champions.
APA Humanism Policy Statement
The APA Board voted and approved for us to begin work on the APA Policy Statement on Maintaining Humanistic Behavior within Pediatrics
Outlined below is the overall goal and objectives we plan to address. An extensive literature review will be included. We hope our end product will be an external policy and published in the Academic Pediatrics Journal.
Overall goal: Affirm the centrality of humanism as a framework for professional practice within pediatrics, the importance of specific humanistic behaviors within our profession and promote this outlook and set of behaviors.
Objectives:
- Put forward a useful and essential definition of humanism with behavioral correlates.
- Articulate the importance of humanism (outlook and behaviors) in pediatrics with specific focus on each of the 4 pillars of the APA mission: education, health care delivery, public policy and advocacy, and research.
- Provide clear ways on how the APA can support humanistic behaviors, not just rhetorically but concretely.
- Encourage members to reflect on the significance of medicine as a calling.
- Endorse the importance of humanistic qualities for APA members.
- Establish and maintain standards of humanistic behavior in APA members.
- Emphasize the importance of humanism in training and suggest assessment and evaluation of humanistic behaviors during medical school, residency, fellowship and beyond.
- Emphasize the importance of identifying and developing self care strategies.
- Consider dissemination of this policy statement to other pediatric organizations (possibly through the Federation of Pediatric Organizations (FOPO) and/or the American Board of Pediatrics).
The following APA members serve on the APA Task Force on Humanism and have begun work on this policy statement. We have also included administrative staff from the Arnold Gold Foundation for their expertise in this area.
Ann Bruder (Administrative staff, Arnold Gold Foundation)
Ann Burke (Current APPD President and worked on professionalism in Milestone Project)
Tumaini Coker (Member of APA Public Policy and Advocacy Committee)
Chris Feudtner (Palliative Care and Ethics)
Cindy Howard (Global Health)
Lyuba Konopasek (Interest in humanism, global health)
Stephen Ludwig (Past APA President with special interest in humanism and work
on professionalism in Milestone Project)
Barbara Packer (Managing Director/COO of Arnold Gold Foundation)
Modena Wilson (Past APA President, oversees professionalism efforts at the AMA)
Development of Resident Grief and Loss Curriculum
In this collaborative project including the AAP, APA and APPD, this work group is developing an innovative and experiential curriculum to address issues of Pediatric Resident Grief and Loss. The members of the AAP Section on Medical Students, Resident and Fellows have requested this curriculum and our working group is responding to this request. The working group has met several times by conference call and we have developed the objectives which address knowledge, communication skills and self care strategies. Our plan is to develop a web-based curriculum that will include modules, discussion guides, scenarios, and videos which will include a menu of options for pediatric programs to implement.
The working group developing the curriculum on Knowledge and Communication Skills includes:
Dena Hofkosh, Jennifer Linebarger, Megan McCabe, Margaret Moon, Deborah Rana,
OJ Sahler, and Keely Smith
The working group developing the curriculum on Self Care Strategies includes:
Susan Bostwick, Ann Burke, Brian Carter, Annamaria Church, Albina Gogo, Marta King,
Amanda Osta, and Janet Serwint
Stayed tuned for updates.
In closing, as I rotate off of the APA Board, I would like to acknowledge that serving on the APA Board as President has been one of the most valued professional experiences of my career. I enjoyed tremendously working with all of the members of the APA Board and appreciated the support and help from the APA Administrative staff, Marge Degnon, Connie Mackay, Allison Hartle, and Jennifer Padilla. It was a joy to work on important projects to further our membership and advocate for the children and families we serve. I know that this opportunity allowed me to learn new skills, experience new opportunities and work with members who I wouldn’t have met in other circumstances. Thank you for this tremendous opportunity.
Janet Serwint
Immediate Past President
Academic Pediatric Association
jserwint@jhmi.edu
Previous Newsletter Articles
- February 2012 Article
- August 2011 Article
- June 2011 Article
- April 2011 Article
- February 2011 Article
