Update from the AAP RFC Chair — Spring 2018
The first AAP Annual Meeting I attended was in 2014 in Nashville, TN during my third year of medical school. Sitting in the Resident/Fellow Council (RFC) town hall and elections, I was astounded by the residents’ passion to move the field of physiatry forward and their dedication to accomplish their goals by working together.
Serving as RFC Vice Chair last year was an incredible honor as I had the opportunity to work with a talented group of residents and fellows who accomplished a great deal in their year of service. However, while leading the RFC Town Hall at Physiatry ’18 in Atlanta, GA, I realized that many of these achievements were unknown to AAP members outside of the RFC and AAP leadership. As RFC chair I hope to resolve this disconnect by providing regular updates on the RFC’s work, and also to encourage others to share their ideas on what the AAP and the RFC can do to improve the PM&R trainee experience.
Going forward, we will provide quarterly updates on the RFC’s activities within each issue of Physiatry in Motion. Below are highlighted just a few of the many projects that the RFC has been actively working on:
- Last year, the RFC successfully brought a proposal to the AAP Board of Trustees to establish the first national medical student council for PM&R. The inaugural AAP Medical Student Council was selected in January 2018 from a large number of impressive applications. This outstanding group has gotten off to a flying start with many initiatives underway to expand medical student exposure to the field of PM&R. You can find out more about the AAP Medical Student Council and it’s members here.
- The RFC has also launched a new medical student mentorship program, pairing medical students with residents from around the country. If you are a medical student interested in mentorship or a resident interested in serving as a mentor, please email our Medical Student Affairs Representative, Wyatt Kupperman, at wyatt.kupperman@sinai.org.
- Dr. Walter Frontera, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation has announced the creation of a Resident-Fellow Corner section of the journal. The RFC has been working closely with Dr. Frontera and the Resident-Fellow Corner Faculty Mentor, Dr. Dinesh Kumbhare, on developing this proposal which we hope will increase trainee involvement in academic peer review and publishing. The call for applications for residents and fellow editors has just completed, and the selected editors will be announced in the coming weeks. Be on the lookout for the official call for article submissions to start in the summer! All medical students, residents, and fellows will be encouraged to submit original articles related to PM&R education and training in a variety of formats.
- Finally, the RFC is excited to announce the creation of a new RFC Forum. We hope that this discussion board will serve as a hub for all physiatrists-in-training to ask questions and find answers about anything related to residency programs and fellowship, as well as provide the RFC with feedback on how we can better serve our peers. One of our favorite things about the AAP Annual Meeting is having the opportunity to find out more about how other programs operate, allowing us to bring ideas back to our own institutions to improve our training. We hope that the RFC forum will provide an opportunity to keep these conversations going throughout the year, as well as foster collaborations in research and other leadership activities among trainees. Please check out the forum here. We recommend registering as a member with the email address you utilize for your AAP membership for administration approval.
These are just a few of the many projects the RFC is currently working on. We will continue to highlight our efforts throughout the year with quarterly updates in Physiatry in Motion. You can also find resources and stay up to date on our activities through our website and social media outlets:
- Website: http://www.physiatry.org/page/AbouttheRFC
- Facebook: AAP Residents/Fellows/Students
- Instagram: @aaphysiatrists
- Twitter: @AAPhysiatry_RFC
If you have any other feedback or ideas for the RFC, feel free to post on the RFC Forum, or email us at residentsfellowcouncil@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Allison Bean, MD, PhD is the 2018–2019 Chair of the AAP Residents/Fellows Council and a PGY-3 Chief Resident in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Follow her on Twitter: @AlliBeanMDPhD
