After the conference

I attended the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) annual meeting last week, and, as usual, I left with a lot of great ideas and inspirations for things to try in our residency program and in my practice. Unfortunately, I have yet to review those ideas and inspirations and do anything with them, which is also as usual. I hate to think that everything from that conference will quickly be lost if I don't apply it, but I know from past experience that it will.

Attending conferences is a great way to learn from others, gain new skills, and expand your horizons. I love the networking and inspiration I also often come away with after attending a Family Medicine conference. I just wish I could figure out a way to not lose all of that great energy and motivation once I get back to the daily routine at home.

I think I'm making some strides. For the last couple of years, I've live-tweeted every session I attend at a conference. Not only does that help disseminate ideas outside of the physical conference, but it also leaves me with virtual notes of everything that I thought was interesting that I can review afterwards. The piece that is missing is making the time to do after I leave.

So, this year, I'm blocking out time in my schedule next week to review all of those tweets and compile a "to do" list from what I learned. In the future, I should probably block that time out before I even leave. I'm working hard to be a lot more deliberate about how I spend my time anyway (fodder, perhaps, for a future post!), and this approach seems to fit into that general idea pretty well. But I'd definitely welcome any and all suggestions!

After all, I invested too much time and energy into attending to lose all of those good ideas.