Southern Medicine

Healthcare planning predicts a shortage of 135,000 or more physicians in the next 10 years, coupled with existing shortages of all healthcare workers including nurses and other allied health professionals. Organized medical leaders must address the current and future gap in delivering health care to America's patients.

Gerald Harmon, MD, FAAFP, presents data outlining the scope of the situation and current and potential approaches to addressing it.

Desiree Burroughs-Ray, MD, MPH, FAAP, FACP, and Christopher Jackson, MD, FACP, FSSCI, discuss contributing factors to physician burnout, barriers to physician wellness, organizational and individual practices to reduce the impact of burnout, and interventions that can promote physician wellness.

This presentation will explore the principles of collective intelligence and teaming, emphasizing their importance in healthcare. SMA Education Committee member Daniel Matthew Sherrer, MD, MBA, FASA, FAACD, will discuss principles of collective intelligence and teaming as well as strategies to minimize conflicts and enhance collaboration.

In this episode, Richard Leggett, MD, discusses writing as a form of physician wellness with Jeffery K. Smith, MD, a modern day "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle", who has published three novels as well as 20 non-fiction books on various historical figures. Together, they address the process of getting started in writing and publishing fiction and non-fiction works.

SMA Education Committee member Rodney W. Overstreet, BSN, CRNA, MNA, discusses compassion fatigue, burnout, PTSD; explains depersonalization and derealization; and details the process of interoception. He also highlights healing tools and modalities that can be utilized to target the pain, release it, and allow space for healing.

In this podcast, Drs. William Ventres and Erick Messias discuss adverse shared historical experiences and the influence historical trauma has on current health outcomes, a topic addressed in their article appearing in the November 2021 issue of the Southern Medical Journal.

Discrimination is often experienced among medical students in clinical settings, especially those who belong to ethnic or gender minority groups, and it can occur in the form of "microaggressions". In this podcast, Ms. Allison Kumnick and Dr. Julia Belkowitz discuss a simulation-based approach to improve medical students' resilience and communication, as well as educate faculty members on unintentional discriminatory practices. They also detail what led them to develop their project, the findings of which they and their coauthors present in their upcoming Southern Medical Journal article, "Developing Awareness and Allies: Simulating Difficult Conversations about Microaggressions for Faculty and Students".

Food insecurity is a problem for people across the lifespan, and it has been exacerbated by COVID-19. Adults facing food insecurity often reduce the variety of their diet and tend to consume a few low-cost, energy-dense, and nutritionally poor foods to maintain caloric intake, and this puts them at an increased risk for a variety of adverse health outcomes, including diabetes, pulmonary diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and obesity. In this podcast Jennifer Mandelbaum discusses identifying and addressing food insecurity in older adults, a topic she addresses in an upcoming editorial in the Southern Medical Journal.

Mentoring is important for both professional and personal development in medical education. In this podcast, Drs. Andrew Sephien, Danielle Gulick, and Ambuj Kumar discuss why mentoring is necessary, as well as provide insight into common qualities and barriers that medical students believe are associated with successful mentors and mentoring relationships. They also detail what led them to conduct a study focusing on mentoring, the findings of which appear in their Southern Medical Journal article, "Prevalence of, Qualities, and Barriers Associated with Mentoring Relationships from Medical Students' Perspective: A Multi-Institutional Cross-Sectional Study" hat they coauthored with Drs. Leigh Hatch, Jordan Karsch, and Karim Hanna.