rachana said:
Has anyone been to the ACP Annual Meeting? I'm an MS-III and thinking of going to the one in April in Philadelphia... has anyone attended one of these and found it to be useful for learning, networking, and/or residency fair purposes?? Thanks!!
I went last year, partly for the poster competition. Not sure how good it is for networking unless you're specifically meeting somebody there. From what I've picked up on, there seems to be a pattern of some academic places not sending faculty to ACP, perhaps because they do enough CE just through the program already. Maybe this is more of a loca/regional thing.
They have a residency fair, which last year was maybe 20 programs (just a guess), mostly community programs but there were a few bigger academic places - UMDNJ, Cleveland Clinic to name two. This year's is supposed to be bigger. There's a mentoring breakfast for students that I did not attend.
Learning - yeah, holy cow. You can attend lectures basically from 7:30-5 pm every day and on a dizzying array of topics. As a second year most of the topics were a bit too clinical for me, but they are likely right on for a third year since they're mostly intended for general internists brushing up on topics or specialists in other areas. The speakers tend to be pretty solid. I attended one last year (San Francisco) and missed the first 10 seconds but caught that the guy was filling in for the regularly scheduled speaker. His presentation was very good, and his Q&A session was amazing. Afterwards I figured out that he was Lee Goldman, chair of medicine at UCSF.
This year I may or may not go, mostly for financial reasons. Last year it was free for me, which made it a no-brainer. (note: the conference itself is free for anybody who joins
ACP , which is free for students).
I'm happy to answer any other questions people might have.
