This will be my first in-person experience at the Stanford Medicine X conference (the twitter hashtag for the conference is #MedX). In the past couple of years, I have seen and experienced the meeting through the internet via their fabulous live video stream of the meeting.
As I was watching the meeting from thousands of miles away, I could not help but feel the energy and passion of the speakers as they were telling their stories and sharing how they believe the patient experience could be better in this broken health care system of ours. The meeting has shown a lot of growth and progression in the past couple of years.
Then comes 2014, this year. I made it a point on my calendar to block out those dates, and make sure that I was not working (the past couple of years, I found myself "on call" can could not attend the meeting). I even felt inspired to even try to be a speaker at the meeting, but I do not feel that I have a compelling story to tell.
With the conference in just a few days, I find myself at another cross roads in my social media career. I was a year ago, when I quit the internet and social media, only to return about a month later.
My work life has become very busy, and possibly overwhelming. I just read an article from the New York Times entitled, "Why Doctors Are Sick Of Their Profession." A lot of that article applies to me. Now, I don't say that to try to garner sympathy. It is that article, coupled with my recent rant called, "The Medical Chart Is Coming To An End. Here's Why," gives you a snapshot into my mindset going into #MedX.
I'm not going to lie. I have high personal expectations going into this Stanford Medicine X conference. I'm looking to recharge my social media passion, and my passion as a physician. The Health Care bureaucracy is frustrating, and as I said in my essay, "This is not what I signed up for when I went to medical school."
So, even though Stanford Medicine X markets itself as being a conference for patients and for the patient perspective, there are many other people out there (namely me) that are looking to express an opinion, to tell a story, and to inspire others in the work that I do. I'm looking forward to catching up with long time friends and to make new ones as my #MedX story begins...