As the new year comes, we are bombarded with resolutions, lists of trends to expect, and that last push to see the Oscar nominated films.  It seems cheesy to get all introspective this time of year, but it is an opportunity to set our course and think about how we might measure our progress.

I challenge you to set 2-3 outpatient medicine goals for the rest of the academic year. If you let me know what they are, I’ll commit to helping you work on them.  These might be medical knowledge related (like practice 3rd/4th line hypertension management), communication related (hone your motivational skills to get patients to exercise), or focus in on practice management (improve efficiency, learn billing). We can point them out with specific clinic patients, I can make up practice cases, or you can do the research and share it in AMR. We can touch base through the next few months to make sure we are on track.

My overarching goal is to make your clinic a more educational experience and give your some tangible skills that you can walk out of residency with.  The first step to getting there is to figure out what those skills would be.