IC 301  

Title: Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Thriving During Your First Two Years of Practice         

Course Description:

The first two years of clinical practice are widely regarded as the most stressful and challenging years of an orthopaedic surgeon's career. Many graduating fellows are excited to begin their own clinical practice only to find that they underestimate the unforeseen obstacles awaiting them.  How to handle these early challenges is rarely discussed or taught during residency or fellowship. The pressures during the first two years of practice can feel overwhelming. These challenges can quickly dampen a new physician's confidence and enthusiasm if he or she does not have a good plan for handling them.  Developing such a strategy is often an overlooked part of sports fellowship training because trainees witness expert surgeons with mature sports practices, which usually does not simulate what they will experience in early practice. Therefore, we hope to bridge this gap with our proposed ICL.  The target audience for this ICL is residents, fellows, and recently graduated fellows who are now early career surgeons.  The format is a round table, case-based discussion.  Difficult patients and surgical cases that have taught us invaluable lessons on how to navigate the first two years of practice will be presented and used as a platform for discussing important topics, including how to handle complications, how to navigate intra-operative struggles or errors, how to manage difficult patients, how to handle consequences of patient care decisions, how to navigate politics of a new practice, how to build a thriving sports practice, and how to achieve work-life balance. We will also discuss the often-overlooked mental health aspects of being an attending surgeon and how to manage these issues.  The primary goal is to provide a comfortable, safe environment to candidly discuss the fears and challenges of beginning clinical practice.  The faculty is composed of young surgeons who are at least two years removed from fellowship graduation.  Of note, this provides young, emerging leaders in AOSSM an opportunity for ICL faculty involvement early in their careers.

Learning Objectives:

• To help attendees understand the unique challenges of starting clinical practice, and to help the attendees feel prepared to navigate these challenges, including handling complications, practice development, and maintaining work-life balance.          
• To help attendees develop strategies to minimize common pre-operative, operative, and post-operative complications.  Faculty will openly share their hardest complications to help the attendees learn from their toughest mistakes.       
• To help attendees maintain a humble attitude and develop a positive, honest action plan when complications or interpersonal conflicts do occur.         
• To help attendees maintain their excitement throughout their early clinical practice by sharing tips and tricks for avoiding burnout while maintaining a passion to serve our patients.           
• To provide the attendees with faculty mentors who will make themselves available to the attendees via e-mail to help provide support, wisdom, and clarity as the attendees begin clinical practice.                

Faculty:

James B. Carr, II, MD     

David L. Bernholt, MD   

Jourdan M. Cancienne, MD        

Joseph D. Lamplot, MD 

Brian C. Lau, MD            

Catherine A. Logan, MD, MSPT, MBA     

Kellie K. Middleton, MD, MPH