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Maryland SHM chapter follows expansive vision
Nidhi Goel, MD, MHS, is a Med-Peds hospitalist and assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since August 2017, she has been the president of the Maryland chapter of SHM.
The Hospitalist recently sat down with her to discuss some of the initiatives that the large and active Maryland chapter is focused on.
Can you talk about your background and how you became interested in hospital medicine?
I grew up in the Baltimore area, and I went to medical school at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. I trained in internal medicine and pediatrics, also at the University of Maryland. Then I joined the faculty after I finished residency in 2014. I practiced as a hospitalist in internal medicine and pediatrics and was also a teaching hospitalist.
Early in my residency, I worked with teaching hospitalists. I rotated on the hospitalist teams, and I was inspired by their perspective on taking care of patients through a lens of quality and safety. I gained a greater appreciation for the risks associated with taking care of a patient in the hospital setting, and the opportunities to mitigate those risks and provide really high quality patient care. It made me realize that was what I wanted to do – and also to teach residents and students how to do the same.
So it was a philosophical attraction to the hospitalist approach?
Yes, and intellectually I’d say that I liked taking care of really complicated, very sick patients. I found that to be interesting – and rewarding when they got better.
Tell us more about what kind of research you do.
I work primarily on projects centered on quality and safety; they involve both adult internal medicine and pediatric patients. Currently on the adult medicine side, we have a project looking at improving outcomes for sepsis in the hospital setting. On the pediatric side, I’ve done a lot of work related to throughput – trying to increase the efficiency of our admissions – and especially our discharge process. Moving patients through the system efficiently has become a significant quality issue, especially during the winter months when our volumes pick up.
How long have you been involved in the Maryland SHM chapter, and what are the rewards of participation?
Early in my residency, I got involved in the chapter because some of the hospitalist faculty I worked with were chapter officers. They believed that the chapter was a good place for residents to be exposed to research and to other hospitalists for networking and camaraderie. So they began inviting us to Maryland chapter meetings, and I found those meetings to be very enlightening – from the practical and research content related to hospital medicine, and to networking with other hospitalists.
I was invited to be part of the Maryland chapter advisory board when I was still a resident, so that I might present trainee perspectives on how the chapter could continue to grow and target some of their activities for the benefit of residents. I stayed involved with the chapter after I finished residency, and when the opportunity presented itself to become an officer, and I decided to take it. I thought serving as a chapter officer would be a really interesting chance to meet more people in the field and to continue to innovate within the chapter setting.
Tell us more about the Maryland chapter.
We are a large chapter and we’re very, very active. Around 7 or 8 years ago, the Maryland chapter reached a significant turning point because the officers that were in place at that time had a vision for building the chapter. That was a major inflexion point in how active the chapter became, leading to the kinds of activities that we do now, and the variety of memberships.
One thing that I’m super proud of our chapter for is that we’ve really tried to continue building on the diversity that is represented in our membership. We have members stretching geographically all through the Baltimore and the Washington corridor, as well as out to western Maryland and the Eastern shore. The Maryland chapter has been able to attract members from different organizations throughout the state and from a diversity of practice settings. We have active members who are not just physicians, but also a nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical pharmacists. We have members from throughout the health care delivery process, which really enriches the discussion and the value of the chapter as a whole.
What kind of initiatives and programs is the chapter working on?
Every year we have an abstracts competition at our fall meeting. Whoever wins that competition is allowed to present at the national SHM conference, which is a great opportunity. We’re really pushing that competition to make it an even more robust experience.
One thing that we had heard from some of our members, and that we recognized as a need as well, was to make our career guidance a little bit more robust. To that end, we’re creating a separate job fair that is almost like an employment workshop – to help people to buff up their CVs, to talk about interviewing skills, contracts, salary negotiations, as well as exposing job candidates to various hospital groups from throughout the area. That’s something that we’re really excited about. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I think it could be a really high-yield event for our members.
We’re also encouraging our nonphysician members to take more active leadership roles in the chapter; several of our nonphysician members on our chapter advisory board, including pharmacists and physician assistants, and we are trying to make sure that we’re also liaising with some of the professional organizations that represent our nonphysician members. So, for example, the clinical pharmacist who’s on our advisory board also is president of the Maryland chapter of the Society for Hospital Pharmacists. She brings a lot of really great ideas and interesting perspectives, and she’s brought a lot of exposure of our SHM chapter to the clinical pharmacy community as well.
What about more long-term goals for your chapter? What’s on the horizon?
We’re targeting early-career hospitalists and helping them to develop their career goals in whatever fashion they see as appropriate.
So, as someone who’s in academics, obviously research and publications are very important for me, but they’re not necessarily as important for other hospitalists. I think our early-career hospitalists are increasingly looking to incorporate things into their practice aside from direct patient care. Our members have interests in various elements of hospital medicine, including patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, clinical informatics, advocacy (especially related to the myriad aspects of health care reform), and strategies surrounding billing and denials. I think having our chapter help our members to realize some of those opportunities and develop their skills in a way that’s personally meaningful to them, as well as good for their marketability as they build their careers, would be a really positive step.
The ultimate goal of the chapter is to service members, so whatever long-term goals we have right now could definitely be fluid as time goes on.
What are some concerns of the chapter?
One area of significant discussion among hospitalists in Maryland has been global budgets. Our system of reimbursement is unique in the nation. It’s a system that aims to emphasize high-value care: the idea is to prioritize quality over quantity.
This system requires that hospitals rethink how we provide care in the inpatient setting, and how we create a continuum of care to the post-acute setting. It poses a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. Hospitalists are positioned perfectly to play a substantial role in implementing solutions.
Why might readers want to consider getting involved in their local SHM chapters?
I think it’s really beneficial to have the exposure that being involved with an SHM chapter brings – to people, to perspectives, to knowledge. There’s not really a downside to being involved with a chapter. You can take as little or as much as you want out of it, but I think most of our members find it to be a very enriching experience. Being involved in a chapter means you can have a voice, so that the chapter ends up serving you and your needs as well.
Maryland SHM chapter follows expansive vision
Maryland SHM chapter follows expansive vision
Nidhi Goel, MD, MHS, is a Med-Peds hospitalist and assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since August 2017, she has been the president of the Maryland chapter of SHM.
The Hospitalist recently sat down with her to discuss some of the initiatives that the large and active Maryland chapter is focused on.
Can you talk about your background and how you became interested in hospital medicine?
I grew up in the Baltimore area, and I went to medical school at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. I trained in internal medicine and pediatrics, also at the University of Maryland. Then I joined the faculty after I finished residency in 2014. I practiced as a hospitalist in internal medicine and pediatrics and was also a teaching hospitalist.
Early in my residency, I worked with teaching hospitalists. I rotated on the hospitalist teams, and I was inspired by their perspective on taking care of patients through a lens of quality and safety. I gained a greater appreciation for the risks associated with taking care of a patient in the hospital setting, and the opportunities to mitigate those risks and provide really high quality patient care. It made me realize that was what I wanted to do – and also to teach residents and students how to do the same.
So it was a philosophical attraction to the hospitalist approach?
Yes, and intellectually I’d say that I liked taking care of really complicated, very sick patients. I found that to be interesting – and rewarding when they got better.
Tell us more about what kind of research you do.
I work primarily on projects centered on quality and safety; they involve both adult internal medicine and pediatric patients. Currently on the adult medicine side, we have a project looking at improving outcomes for sepsis in the hospital setting. On the pediatric side, I’ve done a lot of work related to throughput – trying to increase the efficiency of our admissions – and especially our discharge process. Moving patients through the system efficiently has become a significant quality issue, especially during the winter months when our volumes pick up.
How long have you been involved in the Maryland SHM chapter, and what are the rewards of participation?
Early in my residency, I got involved in the chapter because some of the hospitalist faculty I worked with were chapter officers. They believed that the chapter was a good place for residents to be exposed to research and to other hospitalists for networking and camaraderie. So they began inviting us to Maryland chapter meetings, and I found those meetings to be very enlightening – from the practical and research content related to hospital medicine, and to networking with other hospitalists.
I was invited to be part of the Maryland chapter advisory board when I was still a resident, so that I might present trainee perspectives on how the chapter could continue to grow and target some of their activities for the benefit of residents. I stayed involved with the chapter after I finished residency, and when the opportunity presented itself to become an officer, and I decided to take it. I thought serving as a chapter officer would be a really interesting chance to meet more people in the field and to continue to innovate within the chapter setting.
Tell us more about the Maryland chapter.
We are a large chapter and we’re very, very active. Around 7 or 8 years ago, the Maryland chapter reached a significant turning point because the officers that were in place at that time had a vision for building the chapter. That was a major inflexion point in how active the chapter became, leading to the kinds of activities that we do now, and the variety of memberships.
One thing that I’m super proud of our chapter for is that we’ve really tried to continue building on the diversity that is represented in our membership. We have members stretching geographically all through the Baltimore and the Washington corridor, as well as out to western Maryland and the Eastern shore. The Maryland chapter has been able to attract members from different organizations throughout the state and from a diversity of practice settings. We have active members who are not just physicians, but also a nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical pharmacists. We have members from throughout the health care delivery process, which really enriches the discussion and the value of the chapter as a whole.
What kind of initiatives and programs is the chapter working on?
Every year we have an abstracts competition at our fall meeting. Whoever wins that competition is allowed to present at the national SHM conference, which is a great opportunity. We’re really pushing that competition to make it an even more robust experience.
One thing that we had heard from some of our members, and that we recognized as a need as well, was to make our career guidance a little bit more robust. To that end, we’re creating a separate job fair that is almost like an employment workshop – to help people to buff up their CVs, to talk about interviewing skills, contracts, salary negotiations, as well as exposing job candidates to various hospital groups from throughout the area. That’s something that we’re really excited about. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I think it could be a really high-yield event for our members.
We’re also encouraging our nonphysician members to take more active leadership roles in the chapter; several of our nonphysician members on our chapter advisory board, including pharmacists and physician assistants, and we are trying to make sure that we’re also liaising with some of the professional organizations that represent our nonphysician members. So, for example, the clinical pharmacist who’s on our advisory board also is president of the Maryland chapter of the Society for Hospital Pharmacists. She brings a lot of really great ideas and interesting perspectives, and she’s brought a lot of exposure of our SHM chapter to the clinical pharmacy community as well.
What about more long-term goals for your chapter? What’s on the horizon?
We’re targeting early-career hospitalists and helping them to develop their career goals in whatever fashion they see as appropriate.
So, as someone who’s in academics, obviously research and publications are very important for me, but they’re not necessarily as important for other hospitalists. I think our early-career hospitalists are increasingly looking to incorporate things into their practice aside from direct patient care. Our members have interests in various elements of hospital medicine, including patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, clinical informatics, advocacy (especially related to the myriad aspects of health care reform), and strategies surrounding billing and denials. I think having our chapter help our members to realize some of those opportunities and develop their skills in a way that’s personally meaningful to them, as well as good for their marketability as they build their careers, would be a really positive step.
The ultimate goal of the chapter is to service members, so whatever long-term goals we have right now could definitely be fluid as time goes on.
What are some concerns of the chapter?
One area of significant discussion among hospitalists in Maryland has been global budgets. Our system of reimbursement is unique in the nation. It’s a system that aims to emphasize high-value care: the idea is to prioritize quality over quantity.
This system requires that hospitals rethink how we provide care in the inpatient setting, and how we create a continuum of care to the post-acute setting. It poses a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. Hospitalists are positioned perfectly to play a substantial role in implementing solutions.
Why might readers want to consider getting involved in their local SHM chapters?
I think it’s really beneficial to have the exposure that being involved with an SHM chapter brings – to people, to perspectives, to knowledge. There’s not really a downside to being involved with a chapter. You can take as little or as much as you want out of it, but I think most of our members find it to be a very enriching experience. Being involved in a chapter means you can have a voice, so that the chapter ends up serving you and your needs as well.
Nidhi Goel, MD, MHS, is a Med-Peds hospitalist and assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since August 2017, she has been the president of the Maryland chapter of SHM.
The Hospitalist recently sat down with her to discuss some of the initiatives that the large and active Maryland chapter is focused on.
Can you talk about your background and how you became interested in hospital medicine?
I grew up in the Baltimore area, and I went to medical school at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. I trained in internal medicine and pediatrics, also at the University of Maryland. Then I joined the faculty after I finished residency in 2014. I practiced as a hospitalist in internal medicine and pediatrics and was also a teaching hospitalist.
Early in my residency, I worked with teaching hospitalists. I rotated on the hospitalist teams, and I was inspired by their perspective on taking care of patients through a lens of quality and safety. I gained a greater appreciation for the risks associated with taking care of a patient in the hospital setting, and the opportunities to mitigate those risks and provide really high quality patient care. It made me realize that was what I wanted to do – and also to teach residents and students how to do the same.
So it was a philosophical attraction to the hospitalist approach?
Yes, and intellectually I’d say that I liked taking care of really complicated, very sick patients. I found that to be interesting – and rewarding when they got better.
Tell us more about what kind of research you do.
I work primarily on projects centered on quality and safety; they involve both adult internal medicine and pediatric patients. Currently on the adult medicine side, we have a project looking at improving outcomes for sepsis in the hospital setting. On the pediatric side, I’ve done a lot of work related to throughput – trying to increase the efficiency of our admissions – and especially our discharge process. Moving patients through the system efficiently has become a significant quality issue, especially during the winter months when our volumes pick up.
How long have you been involved in the Maryland SHM chapter, and what are the rewards of participation?
Early in my residency, I got involved in the chapter because some of the hospitalist faculty I worked with were chapter officers. They believed that the chapter was a good place for residents to be exposed to research and to other hospitalists for networking and camaraderie. So they began inviting us to Maryland chapter meetings, and I found those meetings to be very enlightening – from the practical and research content related to hospital medicine, and to networking with other hospitalists.
I was invited to be part of the Maryland chapter advisory board when I was still a resident, so that I might present trainee perspectives on how the chapter could continue to grow and target some of their activities for the benefit of residents. I stayed involved with the chapter after I finished residency, and when the opportunity presented itself to become an officer, and I decided to take it. I thought serving as a chapter officer would be a really interesting chance to meet more people in the field and to continue to innovate within the chapter setting.
Tell us more about the Maryland chapter.
We are a large chapter and we’re very, very active. Around 7 or 8 years ago, the Maryland chapter reached a significant turning point because the officers that were in place at that time had a vision for building the chapter. That was a major inflexion point in how active the chapter became, leading to the kinds of activities that we do now, and the variety of memberships.
One thing that I’m super proud of our chapter for is that we’ve really tried to continue building on the diversity that is represented in our membership. We have members stretching geographically all through the Baltimore and the Washington corridor, as well as out to western Maryland and the Eastern shore. The Maryland chapter has been able to attract members from different organizations throughout the state and from a diversity of practice settings. We have active members who are not just physicians, but also a nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical pharmacists. We have members from throughout the health care delivery process, which really enriches the discussion and the value of the chapter as a whole.
What kind of initiatives and programs is the chapter working on?
Every year we have an abstracts competition at our fall meeting. Whoever wins that competition is allowed to present at the national SHM conference, which is a great opportunity. We’re really pushing that competition to make it an even more robust experience.
One thing that we had heard from some of our members, and that we recognized as a need as well, was to make our career guidance a little bit more robust. To that end, we’re creating a separate job fair that is almost like an employment workshop – to help people to buff up their CVs, to talk about interviewing skills, contracts, salary negotiations, as well as exposing job candidates to various hospital groups from throughout the area. That’s something that we’re really excited about. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I think it could be a really high-yield event for our members.
We’re also encouraging our nonphysician members to take more active leadership roles in the chapter; several of our nonphysician members on our chapter advisory board, including pharmacists and physician assistants, and we are trying to make sure that we’re also liaising with some of the professional organizations that represent our nonphysician members. So, for example, the clinical pharmacist who’s on our advisory board also is president of the Maryland chapter of the Society for Hospital Pharmacists. She brings a lot of really great ideas and interesting perspectives, and she’s brought a lot of exposure of our SHM chapter to the clinical pharmacy community as well.
What about more long-term goals for your chapter? What’s on the horizon?
We’re targeting early-career hospitalists and helping them to develop their career goals in whatever fashion they see as appropriate.
So, as someone who’s in academics, obviously research and publications are very important for me, but they’re not necessarily as important for other hospitalists. I think our early-career hospitalists are increasingly looking to incorporate things into their practice aside from direct patient care. Our members have interests in various elements of hospital medicine, including patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, clinical informatics, advocacy (especially related to the myriad aspects of health care reform), and strategies surrounding billing and denials. I think having our chapter help our members to realize some of those opportunities and develop their skills in a way that’s personally meaningful to them, as well as good for their marketability as they build their careers, would be a really positive step.
The ultimate goal of the chapter is to service members, so whatever long-term goals we have right now could definitely be fluid as time goes on.
What are some concerns of the chapter?
One area of significant discussion among hospitalists in Maryland has been global budgets. Our system of reimbursement is unique in the nation. It’s a system that aims to emphasize high-value care: the idea is to prioritize quality over quantity.
This system requires that hospitals rethink how we provide care in the inpatient setting, and how we create a continuum of care to the post-acute setting. It poses a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. Hospitalists are positioned perfectly to play a substantial role in implementing solutions.
Why might readers want to consider getting involved in their local SHM chapters?
I think it’s really beneficial to have the exposure that being involved with an SHM chapter brings – to people, to perspectives, to knowledge. There’s not really a downside to being involved with a chapter. You can take as little or as much as you want out of it, but I think most of our members find it to be a very enriching experience. Being involved in a chapter means you can have a voice, so that the chapter ends up serving you and your needs as well.