APA Annual Meeting--Rising OMS-II

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

Hi everyone, thanks for the great stuff y'all share here! I follow this forum really closely and love learning from y'all.

I got a scholarship from my school to travel to the APA Annual Meeting in Nola this May. I was wondering what advice you might have for a rising 2nd year med student to make the most out of this experience. For reference, I am dead set on psychiatry, have about 4 years of experience working with dual diagnosis populations as well as research and volunteer experiences adjacent to psychiatry/mental health, and am especially interested in SMI, community psychiatry, and addiction medicine. I have never been to a conference before and I'm wondering about navigating potential networking opportunities, which topics/issues in the field would be most appropriate to my limited training and experience, and general recommendations on being as engaged as I can be without being annoying to the professionals around me. Thanks in advance!

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[ObsequiousAplomb]

Hi everyone, thanks for the great stuff y'all share here! I follow this forum really closely and love learning from y'all.

I got a scholarship from my school to travel to the APA Annual Meeting in Nola this May. I was wondering what advice you might have for a rising 2nd year med student to make the most out of this experience. For reference, I am dead set on psychiatry, have about 4 years of experience working with dual diagnosis populations as well as research and volunteer experiences adjacent to psychiatry/mental health, and am especially interested in SMI, community psychiatry, and addiction medicine. I have never been to a conference before and I'm wondering about navigating potential networking opportunities, which topics/issues in the field would be most appropriate to my limited training and experience, and general recommendations on being as engaged as I can be without being annoying to the professionals around me. Thanks in advance!

Sit in on the talks that interest you and pay careful attention to the discussions. Avoid asking questions in the large audiences. Enjoy the experience.

Casually walk through the poster sections. Smile if you make eye contact with the presenters. Listen to the brief talks from the ones that interest you. Ask questions or otherwise express your genuine responses to their material. Be friendly but also yourself. If you see they're a resident or faculty from a program you are genuinely interested in, mention your interest and if they have nobody else waiting to talk to them spark up a brief conversation. If not, then consider circling back when they're not busy.

My wife and I applied to (and subsequently both matched at) a program we were first made aware of based on a neat poster on a case of Capgras presented by a resident who was the chief resident at the time of that program. We had bonded a little with the resident on the frustrations involved in speaking up and convincing the team to order an MRI for the patient. It was subsequently found out to have been secondary to a stroke and a clotting disorder was later treated. It was such a neat case and the fact that the resident was able to advocate for the patient successfully, encouraged to present it at a national conference, and then confident enough to discuss the emotional experience of that aspect of training was so refreshing we decided to apply there. Have been very happy with the training we received.

Browse the job fairs / networking components with an interested but reserved approach. Don't waste the recruiters time but do see a little bit about how they talk about the jobs and what kinds of jobs are out there you may not yet have heard of. It's a good experience for learning how to read between the lines for that type of thing. Don't expect too much out of it.

 

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

Sit in on the talks that interest you and pay careful attention to the discussions. Avoid asking questions in the large audiences. Enjoy the experience.

Casually walk through the poster sections. Smile if you make eye contact with the presenters. Listen to the brief talks from the ones that interest you. Ask questions or otherwise express your genuine responses to their material. Be friendly but also yourself. If you see they're a resident or faculty from a program you are genuinely interested in, mention your interest and if they have nobody else waiting to talk to them spark up a brief conversation. If not, then consider circling back when they're not busy.

My wife and I applied to (and subsequently both matched at) a program we were first made aware of based on a neat poster on a case of Capgras presented by a resident who was the chief resident at the time of that program. We had bonded a little with the resident on the frustrations involved in speaking up and convincing the team to order an MRI for the patient. It was subsequently found out to have been secondary to a stroke and a clotting disorder was later treated. It was such a neat case and the fact that the resident was able to advocate for the patient successfully, encouraged to present it at a national conference, and then confident enough to discuss the emotional experience of that aspect of training was so refreshing we decided to apply there. Have been very happy with the training we received.

Browse the job fairs / networking components with an interested but reserved approach. Don't waste the recruiters time but do see a little bit about how they talk about the jobs and what kinds of jobs are out there you may not yet have heard of. It's a good experience for learning how to read between the lines for that type of thing. Don't expect too much out of it.

This is exactly what I was hoping for! Thank you for your thoughtful answer. This advice will be really helpful for me

 

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

I also have a maybe silly question-- How popular/well-attended is the Annual Meeting? Is it popular enough that it would be a normal thing to reach out to the psychiatrists who mentored me/wrote me LORs to see if they will also be in attendance--especially those in academic psych? Also is it common for PMHNPs to attend?

 

[ObsequiousAplomb]

I also have a maybe silly question-- How popular/well-attended is the Annual Meeting? Is it popular enough that it would be a normal thing to reach out to the psychiatrists who mentored me/wrote me LORs to see if they will also be in attendance--especially those in academic psych? Also is it common for PMHNPs to attend?

It's attended by lots of people. No idea whether they will be in attendance. It's a socially acceptable enough reason to send someone an email or something like that. Most mentors enjoy hearing updates from mentees. Even if they aren't going to attend they would probably be happy to know you're moving along the path they helped you start down. As long as you're coming off as friendly and keeping connections it shouldn't be much of an issue.

When it comes to people other than physician psychiatrists, sure some of them attend. Heck, some primary care docs attend so they can catch up on what's new in psychiatry. After all, you're going, right? I have no idea whether or not NPs go. I've never bothered to ask anyone their credentials who I spoke with. If it's one of those interactive groups usually people introduce themselves. I've spoken with counselors, social workers, and spouses of people in mental health at the APA meetings. I imagine there were some NPs and I either don't remember or never bothered to ask.

 

[comp1]

Yeah there are ALL sorts of mental health professionals there. Psychologists, social workers, NPs, primary care doctors, everybody. It's pretty well attended historically, but keep your expectations quite low as we come out of COVID. I would think it'll take awhile to get fully going again.

 

[PikminOC]

It's attended by lots of people. No idea whether they will be in attendance. It's a socially acceptable enough reason to send someone an email or something like that. Most mentors enjoy hearing updates from mentees. Even if they aren't going to attend they would probably be happy to know you're moving along the path they helped you start down. As long as you're coming off as friendly and keeping connections it shouldn't be much of an issue.

When it comes to people other than physician psychiatrists, sure some of them attend. Heck, some primary care docs attend so they can catch up on what's new in psychiatry. After all, you're going, right? I have no idea whether or not NPs go. I've never bothered to ask anyone their credentials who I spoke with. If it's one of those interactive groups usually people introduce themselves. I've spoken with counselors, social workers, and spouses of people in mental health at the APA meetings. I imagine there were some NPs and I either don't remember or never bothered to ask.

Yes midlevels go at a reduced cost even...

 

[deleted1100659]

Hi everyone, thanks for the great stuff y'all share here! I follow this forum really closely and love learning from y'all.

I got a scholarship from my school to travel to the APA Annual Meeting in Nola this May. I was wondering what advice you might have for a rising 2nd year med student to make the most out of this experience. For reference, I am dead set on psychiatry, have about 4 years of experience working with dual diagnosis populations as well as research and volunteer experiences adjacent to psychiatry/mental health, and am especially interested in SMI, community psychiatry, and addiction medicine. I have never been to a conference before and I'm wondering about navigating potential networking opportunities, which topics/issues in the field would be most appropriate to my limited training and experience, and general recommendations on being as engaged as I can be without being annoying to the professionals around me. Thanks in advance!

also take time to have a lot of fun while you're there. Free travel to a fun city, that seems like a great deal to me. In residency it becomes a little harder (for my old program first two years mainly) to do trips like that. But don't be afraid to talk to people/engage with others as well at the conference