“I always learn something at these,” Scott Vogelgesang, MD, said as residents, medical students, and faculty took their seats in the Bean Conference Room last week. Heads within earshot of this observation nodded in agreement. A collection of often obscure, usually surprising, and always well-researched presentations were about to be delivered.
Every year, the American College of Physicians (ACP) sponsors an opportunity for residents to pit their clinical acumen and their presentation skills against one another in a series of competitions. The cases on display not only offer pearls about the condition at the heart of the vignette but also a demonstration of how the presenter puzzled through a particular case. (Read coverage of last year’s vignette competition.)
A panel of judges occupied both the Bean Conference Room and the Internal Medicine Library for an afternoon as a record-breaking 33 residents delivered their presentations. Four finalists were selected from the following cases.
Each of the 33 presenters had ten minutes to deliver their presentation followed by five minutes of questions from a panel of three judges. (Presenters delivering via pre-recorded video were not penalized for being unable to field questions.) The judges scored each presenter in three categories on a five-point scale. At the end of the afternoon, the scores were tallied, notes compared, and four finalists were selected.
Those finalists then delivered the presentations again for a new panel of judges two days later during Residents’ Noon Conference.
Devashree Dave: Chest Pain
Mentor: Justin Smock
Derek Hupp: Fever and Cough
Mentor: Joe Szot
John Rieth: Do You Want to Build a Snowman?
Mentor: Manish Suneja
Craig Rosenstengle: Postoperative Presyncope
Mentor: Katie Harris
Following another tally, results were emailed to the department from Residency Director Manish Suneja, MD. “All of the presentations were excellent and showcased the best of our residency program,” he said.
He then announced that Rieth was the winner with his story of a mysterious infection from contaminated snow. Rieth will now face off against the winners from two other residency programs in the state at next week’s ACP chapter meeting, coinciding with the annual Progress conference.
Suneja also thanked this year’s judges:
Lisa Antes
Bryan Gehlbach
Krista Johnson
Vicki Kijewski
Bharat Kumar
Dr. Lee Sanders
Dr. Justin Smock
Dr. Andrea Weber
Jeff Wilson