EVENTS AND MEETINGS
annual membership "duck" dinner:
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Each fall the Geneva Society of Internal Medicine holds an annual membership dinner. This is the main business meeting of the Society and new members are introduced and welcomed. Spouses are invited to join the members for this evening of fine dining and fellowship.
Dr. Gayle Copsey tells us that the Duck Dinner began with an extremely successful fall duck hunting season back in 1949. He had many more ducks than he could use, so asked the "City Club" to prepare them for his Internal Medicine colleagues. For many years, Dr. Copsey and Dr. JD Fitterer provided the ducks for the annual GSIM dinner which has been held at the Switzerland Club. As catering requirements changed, the ducks were no longer wild, but the dinner has continued as an anticipated evening of collegiality before the beginning of the holiday season. New members are inducted into the Society and most importantly, it is an evening to socialize with other internal medicine physicians in the area. The dinner is now more important than ever, as we have fewer opportunities to interact. We hope that GSIM members will plan to attend in upcoming years.
primary care update 2016
The Geneva Society of Internal Medicine planning and executive committees met this last summer and discussed their concern over the diminishing number of GSIM conference attendees. Attendance has been on a downward trend over the last several years. This is actually mirrored at a state and national conference level and some possible theories regarding the trend are due to the increasingly busy schedules of providers, the ease of online CME education, along with the differing needs of hospitalists vs. the ambulatory care provider.
As a result, we have explored joining forces with the Primary Care Update in 2016, and have tried narrowing our focus to a few outstanding speakers. Dr. Newkirk and his committee have been more than gracious and welcoming to the idea. We are still working out the details of this collaborative effort. We have met with Dr. John Roll with WSU regarding Stier lecture funding for Dr. Salvatore Mangione to come from Philadelphia and present at the meeting. Their response was very enthusiastic, and we were encouraged to move forward with him as our primary speaker. We are also hoping to have Dr. William Elliott present who is involved with writing the JNC guidelines.
PCU is held in Switzerland annually over the Bloomsday weekend, and has historically had between 400-500 participants. As we had discussed at our last meeting the timing of this conference attracts many participants who are here to attend Bloomsday. They have had attendees not only from family medicine but also other specialties, notably Internal Medicine. Several of their presenting faculty are either internists or internal medicine subspecialists.
PCU dates for next year are - April 28,29,30th 2016
We hope that you will be as enthusiastic about this innovative collaborative approach as we are and look forward to seeing you at the PCU conference!
Judy Swanson, MD
Geneva Society of Internal Medicine President
