Personal Actions to Create a Culture of Inclusion: Navigating Difficult Conversations With Medical Colleagues.

Microaggressions between members of a team occur often in medicine, even despite good intentions. Such situations call for difficult conversations that restore inclusivity, diversity, and a healthy work culture. These conversations are often hard because of the unique background, experiences, and biases of each person. In medicine, skillful navigation of these interactions is paramount as it influences patient care and the workplace culture. Although much has been published about difficult interactions between providers and patients, significantly less information is available to help navigate provider-to-provider interactions, despite their critical role in improving multidisciplinary patient care teams and organizational environments. This article is intended to serve as a guide for medical professionals who are interested in taking personal responsibility for promoting a safe and inclusive culture by engaging in and modeling difficult conversations with colleagues. The article outlines important considerations to assist with intentional preparation and modulation of responses for all parties involved: conversation initiators, observers of the incident, and conversation receivers. Although these interactions are challenging, together as medical professionals we can approach each other with humility and compassion to achieve our ultimate goal of promoting humanity, not only for our patients but for ourselves and one another.

AAIM Recommendations for the 2020-2021 Internal Medicine Residency Application Cycle in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This statement was released in June 2020 by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine to provide guidance for the 2020-2021 residency application cycle in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many of the recommendations are specific to this cycle, others, such as the Department Summary Letter of Evaluation, are meant to be an enduring change to the internal medicine residency application process. AAIM realizes that some schools may not yet have the tools or resources to implement the template fully this cycle and look toward collaboration within the internal medicine education community to facilitate adoption in the cycles to come.