Med Peds Content

In addition to our didactic academic half days sponsored by each categorical side, we host specific med peds conferences during the noon hour on Wednesdays. These conferences have different themes- wellness, education, alumni, housestaff, and more. The content is designed and executed by the Med-Peds faculty and Med-Peds chief residents. Our residents enjoy Med-Peds specific content and appreciate having all four classes in one space to catch up. Check out the calendar of conferences we have planned for the 2024-2025 year!

2024

	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1st Wed		JC Intro	RiM#	UAB collab##	RiM#	Edu #1
2nd Wed
3rd Wed		Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff
4th Wed	APE*	Academic Med Peds	MP PROuD**	Urban Med Peds	Board Prep	Holiday
5th Wed	Housestaff

2025

	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
1st Wed	Board Prep 2	RiM	Wellness	RiM	RiM
2nd Wed
3rd Wed	Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff	Housestaff
4th Wed	MP PROuD	Switch Con	Rural Med Peds	Edu #3	Edu/Orient
5th Wed			Journal Club

Key

APE*: Annual Program Evaluation where we review yearly goals, improvements, and successes of the program based on program surveys and ACGME data
Alumni #1: Panel- Academic Med Peds Outside of UTHSC
RiM#: Racism in Medicine Curriculum (see Racism in Medicine tab)
MP PROuD**: MP Professional Development
UAB Collab##: A joint noon conference with UAB focusing on how to be an upstander in medicine
Alumni #2: Urban Med Peds
Education #1: Parenting 101 (Resident led session)
Edu #2: The MP Physician in Transitional Care
Alumni #3: Rural Med Peds
Edu #3: Managing disordered eating in the young adult and adult population

The UT Health Science Center Med-Peds program recognizes that racism – historical, systemic, implicit, and individualized – is a pervasive societal problem that has a direct impact on healthcare, both at the individual and system levels. We know that far too often, we as physicians are ignorant of the ongoing impact of racism and of our own personal biases. Because of this, we often fail to provide the best care for our patients, protect our co-workers, or use our voices as community leaders to inspire change. To lead, we must identify the problem, study our history, and create space to learn from each other’s lived experiences.

Historically in our Med-Peds program, traditional medical content has been assigned for residents to complete in six equal blocks throughout the year. Because we believe that learning racism’s impact on medicine holds equal importance for doctors as these traditional topics, we haven chosen to integrate our Racism in Medicine (RiM) curriculum alongside our established learning curriculum to embed it as core content. The first Med-Peds meeting following the conclusion of an educational block is then devoted to small group discussion and reflection of the RiM content. The RiM content is a combination of implicit bias testing, podcasts, guest speakers, and local experts from Rhodes College’s Institute for Health Equity and Community Justice. Residents are provided with content meant to evoke thought and divided into inter-class small in which conversations are moderated by Med-Peds core faculty. Each of the last two years, the final RiM conference of the year has been dedicated to narrative medicine.

The goal of the RiM curriculum is to bring the topic about racism’s effects on colleagues, patients, and system to the forefront of our minds and thoughts. Though this often evokes uncomfortable self-reflection, we believe in intentionally creating space to discuss an otherwise taboo topic. We are excited to be entering our fourth year of the RiM curriculum and for it to grow more over time.

2024-2025 Schedule

Session 1: Introduction to concepts of types of racism and bias - refresher for seniors, introduction for interns
Session 2: Topic on specific health inequities (policing, housing, mass incarceration, environment, transportation, etc.)
Session 3: Topic on racism in the clinical arena (patient care, medical education, admissions)
Session 4: Guest speaker with Memphis focus
Session 5: Topic on understanding specific populations and how they are affected by racism (refugee populations, indigenous people, Asian population, latino/hispanic)
Session 6: Narrative medicine

 

Journal Club has been a long running staple of the UTHSC Med-Peds Program. Journal Club accomplishes multiple goals for our program, including scholarship, staying up to date on medical literature, learning the steps of critical appraisal of an article, and camaraderie. It is a requirement for all PGY3s in our program to present one journal club, often with a peer/partner, and for all residents to attend two journal clubs per year. Journal Club is often held at a faculty home, but few may occur during Med-Peds conference 1-2 times per year.

Book Club through the Years

In 2021, to create opportunities for gathering, reflection, and community, Dr. Wells started a residency book club that meets at his home over dinner. Every year, Dr. Wells will curate a book list of ~10 books and send the list to each class to vote. Books are chosen by rank ballot voting and class-wide book clubs are spread throughout the year. Topics range from racism in medicine, societal racism, Memphis history, or emotional wellbeing in medicine. Please see the list of books our residents have chosen over the last 4 years with links to their Goodreads/amazon accounts. If you have suggestions for books, Dr. Wells is all ears! He also is happy to be your friend on Goodreads.

Each of our residents is paired with a faculty member who serves as his/her advisor throughout all four years. Our advisors meet with residents at least twice per year and serve as an extra layer of support for navigating the transition to residency, wellness, board studying, graduation requirements, and much more. Advisors are paired with residents based on career interests and fit. Advisors often also serve as career mentors, but there are countless other physicians who take interest in mentoring our residents.

One the greatest strengths of our Med-Peds program is the robust number of alumni we have both here in Memphis and across the country. If you can dream it, we likely have someone doing it! Last year in 2023, we formally created an alumni society to organize and network with our wonderful program alumni. So far, we have invited alumni to speak at noon conferences, formed a Facebook group for current and past residents to connect, and hosted one alumni mixer. This year we are excited to have our first annual Alumni Party “A Night to Remember” on September 27, 2024.