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Research & Scholarly Activity 

Scholarly Activity Overview

All of our residents participate in creating case reports and quality improvement projects during their tenure here at Piedmont Macon. We provide assistance with creating ideas for projects, finding faculty mentors, creating project designs, obtaining appropriate approvals, overcoming obstacles, manuscript edits, manuscript development, and submissions for publication. Resident scholarly activity progress and completion is tracked for every program and reported to our GME leadership team and hospital leadership.

Prior to beginning any scholarly activity, residents complete the CITI research, ethics, and compliance training and must remain current until they graduate. Residents can then choose a case report, a quality improvement project, original research project, or literature review as project requirements, but the focus of the project is individualized, and residents are free to choose the topics/focus. The expectation is for each resident to present at the PMM Resident Research Day at least once during residency. Residents are also encouraged to present their work at external conferences and/or publish their manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals. Resources available to our residents include IRB support through Piedmont, librarians and library resources from Mercer University School of Medicine, biostatisticians from Mercer University School of Medicine, potential for financial assistance for projects, conferences, and publication fees, and the opportunity for collaboration with Mercer University faculty and students.

 

Scholarly Activity Projects

Many of our residents choose to publish and/or present case reports externally. Our residents have published in Chest, Cureus, Photodermatology, Photoimmunology, and Photomedicine, Journal of Neuroimaging, Advances in Clinical Medical Research & Healthcare Delivery, American College of Radiology Case in Points, IDCases, EMResident, Emergency Medicine News, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, BMC Neurology, Military Medicine, International Journal of Emergency Medicine, HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Cannabis Research. Additionally, our residents routinely present at ACP and have placed at the Georgia Chapter ACP and National ACP Poster Competitions. We have also had presentations at the CHEST Annual Meeting, the APA Annual Conference, the American Thoracic Society, and the HCA Healthcare Summit Conference. See our list of most recent publications and presentations for more information.

 

Research Didactics

New for 2023-2024 academic year, we implemented a series of didactics and created ideal timelines to assist residents with the ACGME scholarly requirements. These courses are meant to structure, enrich, and formalize the research experience as yet another resource to assist residents with successful completion of quality scholarly work. Some of the didactics are given by guest speakers such as the MUSM librarians, MUSM statistician, and Clinical Research Coordinator. Didactics include:

  • How to: Review Literature for Journal Club
  • How to: Research
  • How to: QI Projects
  • Biostatistics
  • Research Ethics
  • How to: Write up a Manuscript
  • How to: Publishing Your Work
  • Clinical Research Overview

 

Resident Research Day

Every year in May, our Piedmont Macon GME program gives the residents an opportunity to show off some of the great scholarly work they have created over the last year during our Resident Research Day. The presentations may be in the form of a podium presentation or a poster presentation. This year was an exciting year because it was the first annual Joint Resident Research Day with participation from residency programs of both the local hospitals! We collaborated with Mercer School of Medicine to present on campus, and faculty from Mercer served as judges. Three podium presentations were chosen by each hospital to present with an overall winner and runner-up. Posters were displayed as judges walked through, listened to presentations, and asked questions. Posters were also awarded an overall winner and runner-up. We are so proud to announce that out of everyone who attended, Dr. Whittnee Otto and Dr. Mathew Wright won the overall award for podium presentations with their case on Adrenal Crisis-induced Stress Cardiomyopathy, and Dr. Austin Kim was runner-up for his poster on Acute Mitral Regurgitation Presenting as Unilateral Pulmonary Edema.


Journal Club

One of the ways we help residents review the foundations of evidence-based medicine and explore research design is through regular journal club sessions. Each program participates in dedicated journal club sessions monthly in which residents choose a research article and present it to their peers and faculty. The goal of journal club is to not only review recent (or seminal) research and its contribution to medicine, but also to learn how to objectively analyze the study design, evaluate the results, and apply to current practice. Residents are encouraged to provide an interactive presentation that includes discussion and question and answer period. The residents are also asked to cover a teaching point that might be included on the board exam, thereby allowing for additional review of important statistics concepts and providing another teaching experience in a classroom setting.


2022-2024 Publications


GME residents top posters


Presentations

ACP Presentations October 2023:

Ventricular Storm as a Result of Sotalol Toxicity by Dr. Seth Psomiadis, Dr. Whitnee Otto, and Dr. Ankit Patel

A Case of Adrenal Crisis-induced Stress Cardiomyopathy by Dr. Mathew Wright and Dr. Whitnee Otto

She Had a Little Lambl: Understanding the Case of a 40-year-old Female with Atypical Findings of an Already-Rare Embolic Stroke Source by Dr. Catherine Ibrihim

ATS Presentation May 2023:

Acute Mitral Regurgitation Presenting as Unilateral Pulmonary Edema by Dr. Psomiadis

Chest Annual Meeting October 2024:

A Unique Case of Salmonella Empyema by Dr. Carmen Sotomayor Ruiz and Dr. Valeria Demeneghi Aleman

 

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