President's Message

I remember vividly my first few days and weeks as a new resident physician—the angst and anticipation of your pager alarming and thinking about how you will appropriately answer and respond to the call; being introduced to the EMR with its endless documentation and patient messages; the deluge of information you are suddenly emerged in that you must absorb against an endlessly steep learning curve (that as we know, never really ends once you are out in practice either!); the strangeness of being called “Doctor” for the first time; the growing humility that you cannot possibly know everything but the simultaneous curiosity and initial motivation to learn as much as you possibly can and the concurrent excitement but also fear around the responsibility that you now hold caring for another human life. I also recall the strong sense of meaning that I found in my work as a primary care physician, that fortunately still sticks with me today. How no other specialty has the continuity and focus on long term relationships that family medicine does, and the feeling of profound privilege to be allowed to engage with patients on a deeper level and oftentimes in their most vulnerable state.  As practicing attending physicians, we have all gone through the rite of passage that is residency training, with all of its highs and lows, and we all certainly have vivid memories of what it was like and the strong mentors that we worked with who helped to shape us into the physicians that we are today.

One of the main focuses of the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians is to grow and maintain a family medicine workforce with an emphasis on encouraging medical students to choose our specialty while also nurturing and supporting current residents in all of our excellent family medicine training programs across the state. Working in my primary role as a faculty physician for the La Crosse Mayo Family Medicine Residency program in La Crosse, Wisconsin, I am immersed in teaching and mentoring residents on a daily basis. It is job that I am passionate about and truly enjoy, and I am grateful that the WAFP is so supportive of us in these endeavors. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why I have chosen to be involved in and serve in leadership roles in this organization, as it truly reflects one of my primary values as a clinician educator and mentor for our next generation of family physicians.

I am also aware that the vast majority of our practicing physician members and clinicians throughout our state who may be reading this now do not work primarily in academic medicine or in a residency practice or faculty role; nonetheless, I would challenge you to still consider yourself an educator and a leader in this realm. In fact, doctor is derived from the latin word ‘docere’ which means ‘to teach,’ and so we are all teachers, instructors and coaches in our own way and in our own practices and niche areas. You are and should continue to serve as a strong role model for our aspiring medical students and young physicians in Family Medicine.

How can our academy help you with this? The WAFP offers several opportunities for you as a member to be more engaged with medical student and resident education and recruitment to our specialty and state. One of the most meaningful ways to engage is to serve as a mentor or as a preceptor yourself for our state’s medical students and residents. Often times the strongest attraction to our specialty is through a strong mentee-mentorship relationship with a learner, showing them in real time and through your clinical practice how fantastic and rewarding the specialty of family medicine truly is.  If you are interested in doing so but unsure of where to start, please reach out to our academy’s executive director, Brandon Wimmer at brandon@wafp.org, who can help to connect you to available opportunities for this.

Another great way to engage is through a monetary donation to the WAFP-Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the WAFP. Your donation is used to fund medical students attendance at the national AAFP FUTURE conference (previously entitled National Conference) that is held annually each summer in late July to early August and is meant to spark medical student interest in pursuing our specialty, and hopefully to train and remain in the state of Wisconsin for their future practice.

One of the primary barriers for medical students to be able to attend this conference is cost and financial means, as we all know how high the cost of medical education is and how much debt the typical medical student takes on. If we are able to provide scholarships for interested medical students to attend, it not only benefits them, but also our speciality. Our goal is to send and provide funding for 50 medical students to attend this conference each year. Over the past 11 years, our academy has sponsored nearly 450 medical students to this conference, of which 87% have gone on to choose to train in family medicine! Any amount of giving helps, and your donation is tax deductible as the WAFP-Foundation is a 501(c)(3) recognized charity.

The demand for devoted, compassionate family doctors in Wisconsin is more important now than ever before. As a WAFP member, we can all work together to be the force for change and for the betterment of our patients and communities by helping to attract, educate and support the future Family Medicine physician workforce in our state.