Residents practice endotracheal intubation and other procedures during Saturday’s Resident Boot Camp.
Thousands of health care professionals see the ATS International Conference as an opportunity to expand their knowledge. Several hundred of them arrived early to jump-start their learning with programs for early career professionals.
The Resident Boot Camp, the Student Scholars Program, and the ATS Fellows Track Symposium teach fellows, residents, and students nuances of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine or introduce them to the fields.
The Resident Boot Camp has grown to teach 160 fellows “things they didn’t learn in residency that they need to know for their first day of fellowship,” says Boot Camp Chair Brendan Clark, MD, of the University of Colorado, Denver.
The Boot Camp assembled a faculty of 110 health care professionals to share their knowledge in hands-on workshops and interactive lectures and discussions Friday and Saturday.
“They have fun, meet new people, and learn new things,” Dr. Clark says. “They should walk out of this weekend really excited to start that first day of fellowship instead of being scared.”
Residents about to embark on fellowships said they were excited with the opportunity.
“The hands-on expertise of the tutors and learning to do things the right way the first time is good,” says Francis Christian, MD, who will soon start a fellowship at the University of Oklahoma. “In different institutions, people do things different ways. It is good to see what other people are doing nationally.”
The Fellows Track Symposium attracted more than 200 fellows from around the world for 15 lectures and two breakout sessions on Friday and Saturday. The Student Scholars Program is designed to introduce students to pulmonary, critical care, or sleep medicine so they might enter the field.
Jared Mereness, MS, a graduate student at the University of Rochester, says of the Student Scholars Program, “This is the one big meeting for our lab every year. This is the perfect space for what we do.”
Resident Boot Camp is supported by an educational grant from Olympus Corporation of the Americas. The RBC also received in-kind support from Ambu, AstraZeneca LP, BD, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., CareFusion, Clement Clarke, Cook Medical, LLC, ERBE USA, Inc., FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc., Getinge, GlaxoSmithKline, Hill-Rom, MicroDirect, Monaghan Medical Corporation, Olympus Corporation of the Americas, Philips Respironics, ResMed, Smiths Medical, Teleflex, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Verathon, and Vyaire Medical, Inc.
The Fellows Track Symposium is supported by educational grants from Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., AstraZeneca LP, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc., Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,. The FTS also received in-kind support from FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc.