Arianne “Cuff” Baker, MD
Chief Resident in Pediatrics at MGH, PGY-4
Last weekend I flew to Phoenix, Arizona for Learn
Serve Lead 2019, the annual Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
national conference. This year there were nearly 5,000 registrants from across
the country. Attendees are a mix of clinician-educators, deans, administrators,
researchers, and other people who care about medical education at both the
undergraduate and graduate level. I was excited to immerse myself in the world
of medical education and be surrounded by people with different perspectives
and expertise.
The Saturday plenary presentation was a truly outstanding talk by Bryan Stevenson, JD, a lawyer with years of experience defending clients in difficult situations. His presentation was one of the best I’ve ever been to. He described his personal career history in becoming a lawyer and how he ended up defending people on death row and children in dire straits. He gave advice for how we as medical educators can help fight social injustice in our country: get proximate to the people you want to serve, change the narrative of inequality, be willing to be uncomfortable and do things that are inconvenient to make change, and stay hopeful that change is possible. I was inspired by his talk and many other attendees must have been, too, since many people mentioned “getting proximate” in other sessions throughout the weekend.
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| The panel and facilitator presenting 'Highlights in Medical Education: Novel Curriculum' at AAMC's Learn Serve Lead 2019 in Phoenix, AZ. From left to right, panelists Sara Clemons, MEd, Dr. Arianne "Cuff" Baker, Dr. Lauren Block, and Dr. Fatimah Bello, along with facilitator Dr. Cayla Teal |
Attending this conference was an excellent step in
my professional career. A project I have been working on at MGH was accepted
for an oral presentation as part of a panel called Highlights in Medical
Education: Novel Curriculum. My co-panelists also discussed new curricular
interventions they’ve been studying at different institutions. It was the
largest crowd I have ever presented to – more than 200 people! I was nervous
but ended up really enjoying the opportunity to share my work with such a
diverse group.
One highlight of the Learn Serve Lead conference was a session on Sunday with Editors from several of the highest-impact journals in medical education. Each editor briefly presented on their journal’s scope and what they look for in submissions. We then had the opportunity to rotate among 4 different tables with different journal editors to ask questions in small group formats. I discovered a section in one big journal that I hadn’t noticed before that seems like a wonderful place to submit the scholarly workup of my project for publication, and I am excited to have this on my docket.
Going to the conference reinforced my excitement and commitment to building a career in medical education. For future attendees, it is a busy weekend with many possible events at every time slot. The organizers have an app that you can review ahead of time to decide which sessions you want to go to, and since there are so many I highly recommend taking some time before the conference looking through them all. The app also has the slides for every session embedded for download, so you can bring home the content and refer to it later – and you can see what you missed in concurrent sessions that you couldn’t get to. Overall it was a wonderful experience and I am so thankful to the Partners Centers of Expertise for making it possible to go!
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