APSA Newsletter - Phi Psi, 2008 Summer, Volume 3, No. 1

From the Editors

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Kim Gannon & Kofi Mensah, APSA Newsletter Co-Editors, APSA Public Relations Committee

Since our last newsletter, APSA and it‘s members have been extremely busy! We hope that this summer‘s edition of the "Phi Psi" gives a brief glimpse into recent APSA activities. One of the most important and most ex-citing events of the past quarter was the 4th annual meeting of APSA in Chicago, IL. This meeting is an opportunity for members from across the country to get together, share ideas, and develop networks both at the graduate level as well as with professors. We also have regional meetings, held in the fall. In the past these regional meetings have been held in Texas, California, and New York – as our organization grows, it is highly likely that this type of meeting will be expanded to the other regions. The "Annual Meeting Report" in this edition details highlights this year‘s meeting.

Building on Our Success: A Message from the New APSA President

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James Pauff, President, American Physician Scientists Association

Like many others, I received an email in the spring of 2006 asking if I would consider serving as the institutional representative (IR) from my institution to the American Physician Scientists Association. I had only recently been elected Vice President of our medical scientist student organization at Ohio State, and was making the move into the graduate training-focused years of my MD/PhD training program. Concurrently, I was involved in the medical-research honor society at Ohio State, a group that focused on highlighting and rewarding research done by medical students. Involvement with a national organization for physician scientist trainees seemed like a great idea at that time, and it was decided that I would be the APSA IR from Ohio State.

Renaissance Doctors: Joint Degrees in Medicine, Social Sciences, and the Humanities

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Na'amah Razon & Scott Stonington, APSA Member-at-Large (Social Sciences/Humanities)

In 2005, the University of California, San Francisco hosted the first conference of MD/PhDs in the Social Sciences and Humanities in over a decade. It was an attempt to coalesce a disparate community of physician-scholars - or "Renaissance Doctors," as they (half)-jokingly called themselves at the conference. Despite common methods, perspectives, and paths, physician-social-scientists and physician-humanists often forge a lonely way through institutions dominated by labs and clinical trials. Nonetheless, many of these individuals have reshaped the face of medicine. Paul Farmer and Jim Kim, both MD/PhD social science students at Harvard in the 1980s, have advocated for sophisticated social science concepts in medicine and public-health. Since the 1980s, the NIH has increasingly encouraged joint training in these fields, and the number of educational spots available has grown dramatically, particularly in the last ten years.

Announcing Your 2008-2009 APSA National Leadership

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Freddy Nguyen, Chairman—Board of Directors, Past President, American Physician Scientists Association

Dear APSA Members, I would like to take this opportunity to announce your 2008-2009 APSA National Leadership: President James Pauff, The Ohio State University President-Elect David Braun, Mount Sinai School of Medicine Past President Freddy Nguyen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Vice-President Christopher Alvarez-Breckenridge, The Ohio State University

A Letter from Freddy

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Freddy Nguyen, Chairman—Board of Directors, Past President, American Physician Scientists Association

Dear Members of the APSA, It has been with deep pleasure to have served as your President during the past four years. However, as I write my last President‘s Column, I am taking this opportunity to look back over some of APSA‘s major accomplishments during this formative period. What initially began as an idea between four MD-PhD students in late 2003 has now grown into an a full-fledged professional organization made up of over 1100 members from nearly 200 medical institutions, hospitals, and universities in the United States and Canada. APSA also holds active representation from over 120 medical schools that make up the Institutional Representatives of the APSA. As the organization continued to grow in membership, APSA also grew the number and depth of projects that surrounded the themes of Mentoring, Networking, Outreach, and Resources. I hope these few examples of what we have been able to accomplish through the APSA to date will inspire you as a future physician-scientist to become more proactive about your own training, your own career, and your individual role in the physician-scientist community. In the same spirit, I hope that it will further encourage you to engage your APSA leadership at every level (local, regional, and national) in helping us help you address your needs and issues and to help empower you as a physician-scientist trainee.

APSA 2008 Annual Meeting Report

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Kofi Mensah, APSA Newsletter Co-Editor and New APSA Public Relations Committee Vice-Chair

"It was great to get a vision for what our futures might be." That is how Brian Fuehrlein, one of the four founding members of APSA and institutional representative from the University of Florida described the recently concluded APSA Fourth Annual Meeting. As has become tradition, the meeting was held in Chicago at the end of April in conjunction with the annual joint meeting of the American Association of Physicians (AAP) and the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), which celebrated its centennial anniversary. This year, there were over 200 attendees, and 60-70% of them attended for the first time. This compares with about 140 attendees last year - a testament to the rapid and wide-spread growth of APSA since its inception in 2004. The fourth annual meeting was marked by several firsts for APSA as well as milestones in our burgeoning organization.

A review of: The Complete Guide to the MD/PhD Degree: The Art and Science of “Doing it Twice”

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Brenda Marsh, Oregon Health and Sciences University Institutional Representative

Navigating through higher education can be, at times, a painful process. In my case, the tears began just as the process began- with my first acceptance into an MSTP program. Having been out of school for several years by that point, I had no idea there were rules to this game. And so, upon receipt of my first acceptance, the one that should have elicited a sigh of relief, I instead cried and cried on the phone with the admissions officer as I wrestled with the morality of saying "yes" to this program while secretly knowing I would bow out if my dream school came through. Rookie mistake, I now know, and a cringe-worthy story to relate to fellow students at Welcome Back BBQs. But tear-stained cheeks were to appear throughout my training, generally due to more subtle pressures and more complicated issues. Should I begin graduate school after M1, which would set me up for an easier transition back to medicine and the wards, or after M2 or even M3, which would allow me to truly integrate my burgeoning medical knowledge with my research? Should I join the large lab that will push me until I crack, revealing what I hope is the great scientist inside, or the small lab that feels like home, full of warm personalities and a sense of camaraderie? How can I possibly prepare for the wards, after so much time away, no less, when I‘m trying to finish up experiments, bang out a couple of papers, and write my thesis all at the same time?