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AAP Bulletin Summer 2017

From the President and Program Chair: AAP Annual Meeting Update

Amin Azzam, MD; Iljie Fitzgerald, MD, MS, 8/9/2017


Some tantalizing tidbits from our President, Amin Azzam, with innovative input from our Program Chair, Iljie Fitzgerald…

AAP Annual Meeting
​High Stakes, Higher Hopes for Psychiatric Education
September 6-9, 2017
Denver, CO

CASUAL ATTIRE... Everyday... All day

Dear AAP members:

Happy August!  The star cluster of Messier 30 is best observed around August. This month was originally named Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first month of the year.

All of the above according to Wikipedia—one of my favorite websites for encyclopedic information.  Increasingly it’s also a source of health information.  Way back in 2013, the medical content consisted of 155,000 articles across 255 languages supported by more than 950,000 references.  And by the end of 2015 there were over 1.4 million references supporting those articles.

​T
he source of this information is an article published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research by James Heilman, MD.  James is an emergency medicine physician affiliated with the University of British Columbia, and an active clinician-Wikipedian.  More importantly, he is our keynote speaker for the AAP 2017 Annual Meeting in Denver.  He will share his perspective on how clinicians who embrace Wikipedia-editing can join a movement to provide free high-quality information to those seeking health information on the internet.  Check out the English language Wikipedia page on Schizophrenia to see just how robust a Wikipedia page can be.  At the time of this writing that page was supported by 208 references and was being viewed over 9000 times per day.  I know you’ll be inspired by James’ work at his presentation in Denver.

Speaking of Denver, the annual meeting program planning committee has been hard at work building an exciting program for you.  We will of course have our wonderful slate of workshops, poster session, and the popular Master Educator series.  This year’s Night Out activity will be held on the “SunDeck at the DAC.”  Early September in Denver should be a lovely time for a roof top event.  And for those who like to linger at the night out, we’ll have an “afterparty” at the DAC’s 4-lane bowling alley—the oldest alley West of the Mississippi.

Additionally, this year we are piloting an AAP Presidential Book Club.  This will meet following the end of the Wednesday afternoon workshops and immediately prior to the opening reception. Participants who pre-register will be offered one free glass of wine/beer at the Book Club, and can segue from the Book Club to the opening reception, where they can stay and linger in discussion as long as they want.

Why a book club?  As you know, lifelong learning is integral to a psychiatrist’s ongoing professional development. While reading medical journals is essential for keeping up to date, new perspectives can change our perspectives and stimulate growth. Book groups provide open forums for the exchange of ideas and opinions.  This year’s book club will be co-facilitated by Margaret Chisolm of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Dr. Chisolm has been leading the “Reading the Mind Book Group” for psychiatry residents at Hopkins for many years.

For our inaugural AAP Presidential book club, we will discuss Alison Bechdel’s memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. In this critically acclaimed 2007 graphic memoir, the author recounts growing up in a small town, where her father was a high school English teacher and also ran the family business: a funeral home. Her father projected an image as a dedicated family man, but as Bechdel comes of age, she discovers her father is a closeted gay man. Soon thereafter, her father dies - by what she and others believe to be suicide - leaving Bechdel and her family to cope with their family secrets and the reality of her father’s life and choices.

You can easily find a copy of the book online.  Better yet, support your local bookstore.  Happy pre-reading.  I look forward to sharing my perspectives on the novel with old and new friends alike in Denver in September!

Oh wait, there’s more! For this year’s Annual Meeting, we are also incredibly excited to announce that our organization will take a quantum technological step forward and save trees by adopting a smartphone app called Whova. With this app, attendees will be able use their iPhone or Android phone to navigate the meeting, view the agenda, and network with fellow AAP-ers! More details will follow soon, including instructions for how to download the app and access our Annual Meeting on it.

 

AAP Bulletin – Summer 17, Page 2 of 7