ACP Resident Clinical Vignette Competition, 2018

Clinicians rely on their colleagues to share the stories of what they encounter in their work. Individuals cannot read nearly enough to be prepared for every illness, presentation, or combination of factors that might appear. Oral case reports then become a critical means not only to understand the specific ways that textbook conditions can appear but also the multitude of ways problems can be solved based on evidence presented. In other words, the audience of a clinical vignette learns about new things to look for as well as new ways to think.

To give Internal Medicine residents the opportunity to improve this skill, the American College of Physicians sponsors a Clinical Vignette Competition each year. Every residency program competes against other programs, first at the state chapter level and then at the national level during their annual meeting. The next ACP Internal Medicine Meeting will be held in Philadelphia in April 2019.

But first, 26 residents at the University of Iowa’s Internal Medicine Residency Program had to compete against one another in front of a panel of their faculty judges. Last week, over the course of an afternoon, each presented their ten-minute cases, followed by five minutes of questions.

After deliberating, the panel of judges compared their scores and selected four residents to advance to the finals, presented during noon conference on Tuesday of this week. Those finalists were:

(R2) Jason Cascio, MD, PhD: “Acute Abdomen and Crushing Chest Pain Following Surgery”
Mentor: Jeydith Gutierrez Perez, MD

(R2) Aziz Hammoud, MD: “An Issue with Tissue”
Mentor: Lawrence Horwitz, MD

(R2) Matt Soltys, MD: “Storming Cardiac Sarcoidosis”
Mentor: Milena Gebska, MD, PhD

(R2) Nick Williford, MD: “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
Mentor: Milena Gebska, MD, PhD

Following the noon conference, Dr. Manish Suneja, Internal Medicine Residency Director, announced that Dr. Cascio’s engaging and informative presentation was the winner. Dr. Suneja made a particular point of congratulating all the participants and thanking their mentors for the amazing presentations on display.

Dr. Cascio will deliver his winning presentation next at the Iowa Chapter of ACP when they convene on the evening of Thursday, October 18, at 5:00 p.m. at the Hotel Vetro. He will compete against the winning presentations from two other Internal Medicine residency programs in the state.

Thank you to all participating residents and to the following faculty members who served as judges for this year’s competition!

Lisa Antes, MD
Katie Harris, MD
Richard Hoffman, MD, MPH
Vicki Kijewski, MD
Joel Kline, MD
Justin Smock, MD
David Stoltz, MD, PhD
Manish Suneja, MD
Joseph Szot, MD
Mark Wilson, MD, MPH