November 2021

One of the key aims of SGIM Forum is to feature the creative writings and critical reflections of its membership. Gently pushing boundaries and expanding our horizons through respectful dialogue and a combination of gradual and fast-paced change when each is necessary, SGIM members move our communities forward with fresh and vital perspectives.

This issue features a first-ever collaboration with SGIM’s Mid-Atlantic Region leaders to feature creative work from its members. Geriatrics fellow physician, Pesquera, examines her COVID-19 experiences through the lenses of art and narrative medicine. Medical student, Iluore, shares her poetry, Putting Out Fires. Each piece is distinguished for being selected as two of the top three Arts & Humanities submissions from the 2021 Mid-Atlantic SGIM Annual Meeting; the third top-ranked submission will be published in the December SGIM Forum issue.

SGIM leadership and members also remark on persistent contemporary issues relevant to our daily lives as general internists: Lypson, SGIM President, reminds us of our civic duties, including voting, and also collective duties as an organization; Bass, SGIM CEO, and Baron, President and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, address members’ concerns about the spread of misinformation by physicians; and Leung, Kozman, et al., offer a brief tool to mitigate one’s own point-of-care implicit biases in clinical practice. Leung, SGIM Forum Editor, looks to K-pop for refreshment and inspiration in her column.

Academic hospitalists, Katsouli, et al., and Keniston, et al., each offer complementary articles on hospitalist well-being and adaptation during the pandemic: one, an institutional needs assessment and response, and the other, a multi-institution network of hospitalists building a knowledge and experience sharing network across the U.S. Isaac, a resident, reflects on a patient’s resilience in the face of COVID-19 complications. Finally, Schmidt, et al., offer caution against a one-size-fits-all, quality metric-driven approach to screening for and managing depression among our patients.