Submitted by Patrick Hemming, MD, assistant professor of medicine (general internal medicine)
This past Wednesday, over 60 faculty, students and residents from Duke and UNC gathered at the University Club in Durham for our inaugural #ProudtobeGIM gathering. We had a great time as you can see from our photos. If you took pictures yourself, please feel free to share or tweet as part of the nationwide campaign.
SGIM President, Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith, attends!
We were especially lucky to be joined by the Society of General Internal Medicine’s President, Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith. Dr. Corbie-Smith spoke to the group and highlighted how crucial our work is; she also underlined how SGIM stands out as a vibrant, supportive and collaborative academic home for generalists.
She encouraged applicants for our SGIM Young Scholars award for this year’s annual meeting in Washington DC, May 8-11, and emphasized the remarkable level of interest in this year’s meeting program (record numbers of abstract and workshop submissions).
Unique networking for two universities
Our #ProudtobeGIM activity set out to create social connections: between trainees and faculty as well as between faculty within and across our big organizations. Several people mentioned that this is a rare and singular event to have our two campuses together and that it is more common to meet one another while attending national or regional meetings than to ever get together locally. We hope that this can change, as so many of our activities and interests overlap considerably.
Julian Xie, Duke MS3, presented a student community project 
In gathering this week, we wanted to focus on the needs of our community. To this aim, we had a presentation by Julian Xie, a 3rd year Duke medical student regarding multiple incredible local initiatives led by our medical students addressing food insecurity. We hope that such presentations will encourage other avenues to assist patients and improve our community.
Team effort appreciated!
Our event could not have happened without the help of several individuals: Dr. Karen Kimel-Scott organized and publicized the event for the UNC contingent. SGIM and both divisions provided funding for the event. Duke residents Caroline Sloan and Katie Pollard helped on the planning committee. Our DGIM Communications team — Dr. Martha Adams, Claire Il’Giovine and especially Megan Churchill —coordinated the event space, invitations and advertising.
We are privileged to work in the exciting and vital field of General Internal Medicine. We hope to continue gathering and to see you all next year!
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