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From the President’s Desk: Embracing our future at CAP18

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December 2018—The CAP Curriculum Committee chaired by Sarah M. Bean, MD, follows a competency-based model to build an annual meeting program that is practical, prescient, and diverse. The committee is balanced demographically, experientially, and scientifically. Whatever the topic, there is someone who can speak to it.

Over two years, the group studies participant evaluations from prior meetings and debates the best-suited teaching tools for each topic. The goal is to provide utility, variety, relevance, and challenge. Their approach is thorough, thoughtful, measured. But as Kim Kruger, their longtime CAP staff person puts it, they’re not risk averse.

CAP18 covered 40 of the 51 potential subject areas identified for this year. The final faculty roster featured 130 of the brightest lights in pathology. We enjoyed breakfast workshops, roundtables on everything from digital pathology in community practice to changes in federal payment policy, small-group lectures, SAMs, and a buzzing exhibit hall featuring 91 industry representatives.

R. Bruce Williams, MD

A five-day immersion to learn from the best of the best in pathology makes for a lot of energy. Scientific content will always be the No. 1 reason to attend the annual meeting, but the event as a whole addresses our professional needs in new ways every year. Our House of Delegates had a successful meeting and the PathPAC reception was well attended. The CAP Foundation hosted an architectural boat tour of Chicago—a cold evening, warmly enjoyed. Our meeting began on Saturday this year to accommodate more of those whose weekday schedules are less flexible, and that experiment was a great success: Three of the four Saturday courses were among those best attended all week long.

As Dr. Bean explains it, the 15-member committee recognizes that CAP members rightfully expect learning that is dynamic and challenging. Courses are multidimensional. For example, an informatics course may emphasize communication if that aspect would be most useful to our members right now. Especially on hot topics, course content will cover preconceptions and misconceptions. And programming structured to make us think about how we are evolving as physicians, scientists, and, well, humans is on the short list.

Which brings me to the scientific plenary, a main event. This year’s topic, “Starting the Conversation: The Physician Burnout Crisis—Improving Resiliency and Wellness,” centered on the sometimes tenuous space where the personal and professional intersect. As I mentioned, the CAP Curriculum Committee is not risk averse. Still, its members were breaking new ground. They could not know how their audience would respond.

I’m sure that any misgivings were quickly dispelled when the meeting space began to overflow with attendees. First extra chairs were brought in. Then the staff abandoned their seats to watch the program via social media in the hallway. By the time we had welcomed everyone and introduced our speakers (James S. Hernandez, MD, a pathologist at Mayo Clinic, Bryan Bohman, MD, senior advisor to the Well MD Center at Stanford, and Timothy J. Bono, PhD, a psychologist at Washington University), standing attendees were lining the auditorium walls. Another 1,000 unique viewers watched the program online during the meeting. (The Oct. 21 plenary is among a number of Facebook Live videos broadcast at CAP18.)

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