CardioExchange Archive

CardioExchange, an NEJM practice community for medical professionals dedicated to improving cardiac patient care, was active from 2009 to 2015. CardioExchange fostered discussion between clinicians from across the globe.

March 16th, 2015

Learning Opportunities for Fellows-in-Training at ACC 2015

Saurav Chatterjee is a Cardiology fellow blogging this week for CardioExchange in San Diego at this year’s annual ACC conference. For more of our ACC.15 coverage including late-breaking news and in depth analysis, stay tuned to our ACC.15 Headquarters.

There have been a couple of interesting sessions for fellows-in-training and early career professionals amid the ‘buzz’ around the late-breakers and the myriad networking and learning opportunities in beautiful and sunny San Diego.

This year I got a chance to sit in on the Accreditation Compliance Work Group (ACWG) to identify potential areas of concern with the current system of annual disclosures. Some of the problem areas identified included presenters occasionally disregarding relatively small amounts paid, monetary disbursements being made to institutions instead of individuals, conflicts developing in the intervening period between abstract acceptance and actual presentation, and the absence of a framework to systematically identify and potentially take punitive action for non-adherence to current guidelines. There seem to be exciting times ahead for FITs, with training sessions being offered by the ACC to learn more about the process and the opportunity of auditing different presentations at future meetings. Stay tuned!

Also, there is a nice clinical simulation hands-on session on offer at the ACC—great for senior residents and fellows-to-be, or for first-year fellows to hone and refresh clinical knowledge and skills with simulation at booth #3932.

Categories: General


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One Response to “Learning Opportunities for Fellows-in-Training at ACC 2015”

  1. Westby G Fisher, MD says:
    March 17, 2015 at 7:13 am

    Warning. Rant alert.

    “…the absence of a framework to systematically identify and potentially take punitive action for non-adherence to current guidelines.”

    I hope you are talking about embargo guidelines or disclosure guidelines and not clinical guidelines. (In reality, it probably doesn’t matter which of these you imply because increasingly we find that our Central Planners are morphing the word “guideline” into “mandate,” but I digress). Seriously, “punitive actions?” Sounds a bit Orwellian to me. As I read this post I shook my head wondering where the hell the joy in medicine is going. Fellows working on “Accreditation Compliance.” Really? What ever happened to worrying about the next innovation in medicine? Are we all going to promote consulting jobs for industry instead? (Read Medstro sometime to see what I mean).

    As I walked down the central “avenue” of the ACC15 product displays the size of Montana, joyous “early career professionals” (whatever those are) were throwing bean bags against a velcro wall in the name of LDL receptor marketing. I saw others lying in a Pradaxa “stroke simulator” without a corresponding “bleeding simulator” nearby. It’s all so, well, cheesy yet so expensive and subtlety deceptive.

    Meanwhile fellows are drowning in debt, we have regulators making you pay through the nose for credentialing, yet you were doing “compliance” training. Where’s the outrage from fellows? Where’s the call to action? Are all fellows just going to be excellent sheep to what’s happening to them in medicine? Are they too scared they’ll not get a job any other way that to be good boys and girls?

    It would seem so.

    Yet THIS is exactly the kind of discussion that should be happening at national meetings, not some BS compliance training that wreaks of 1984.

    I get that medicine has forever changed, but if fellows really want to get well-trained, they’ll fight for more time at the bedside, not more time punching computer keyboards or playing with plastic simulators in the name of “safety.”

    Please understand this rant was not about your post. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with this community but I think there needs to be more discussion about the opposing forces that are taking place in medicine right now that increasingly appear to be about making more money for the special interests while disempowering those who deliver the care rather than what really matters: the patient.