Internal Medicine Interest Group of the Month: Keck School of Medicine of USC
This year the theme of the Internal Medicine Interest Group (IMIG) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has been collaboration. Forging new ties with our campus Primary Care Community Medicine Student Coalition (PCCMSC) and the Southern California ACP Chapter Council of Student Members has provided us with many fresh ideas and the manpower to put them into action. We have also held several joint events with other student interest groups. IMIG has historically had a large voice on campus, but partnering with different groups has given us additional enthusiasm and enabled us to bring new experiences to our members.
Founded this year, PCCMSC is advised by Yvonne Banzali, Program Coordinator for the Keck-USC Primary Care Community Medicine Program. The coalition consists of the most active members of student interest groups in family medicine, pediatrics, med-peds, obstetrics and gynecology, and public health. One of the many events we participated in through PCCMSC was the Bravo Health Fair, designed to provide high school students and their families with a wide variety of health services and information. We set up a booth for asthma screening and education. Our booth included an informative poster board presentation, pamphlets from the American Asthma Foundation, and even asthma comics for the teens. Many young students and their concerned parents approached us, eager to learn about the pathophysiology of the disease. We helped plan several other events through PCCMSC as well, including a Primary Care Panel, which brought together individuals from various fields in primary care to discuss their unique experiences, an International Medicine Panel, which focused on the incredible stories of physicians who have practiced medicine in various parts of the world, and the Keck-USC and Charles Drew University Primary Care Week and the Community Medicine & Public Health Lecture Series, PCCMSC's biggest and most celebrated event this year.
While we successfully united forces with groups on the USC campus, we went further and are now working with UCLA's IMIG to establish the new Southern California ACP Chapter Council of Student Members. We are excited to host our first event this March, Pearls for the Boards, featuring some of our most renowned professors, including an endocrinologist, hematologist/oncologist and pulmonologist. The event is highly anticipated and expected to draw in a large crowd.
Although much of our time has been dedicated to these larger programs, we are also partnering with individual student groups to offer our members as many resources and opportunities as possible. Our upcoming events include a lunchtime lecture with the Keck-USC Student Interest Group in Neurology, which will feature Dr. Paul Holtom, an erudite infectious disease specialist. Moreover, we are helping first-year medical students begin a cardiology student interest group.
Effective collaboration is essential as a physician. This year has been extremely exciting for our IMIG as we have grown our network extensively and witnessed firsthand the incredible benefits of working with other groups. These efforts have allowed our members to connect with individuals from diverse fields to share experiences, offer new insight, and learn together.
Kate Doolittle, Erica Cua, and Aarti Jain
2010-2011 Keck School of Medicine IMIG Co-presidents, Class of
2013
kdoolitt@usc.edu, cua@usc.edu, aartijai@usc.edu