SPECIALTY SPEED NETWORKING: PHYSICIAN PERSPECTIVE
AUTHOR John David Kolter, MD
S
pecialty Speed Networking, a signa-
ture program of the Greater Louis-
ville Medical Society (GLMS), brings
together a dozen or so practicing
physician members from the com-
munity to showcase their particular
specialty to interested medical stu-
dents. The dinner event takes place each year
at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and is hosted
by GLMS. Students, in an appealing aspect, are treated to a meal,
compliments of the medical society, and are then grouped and rotate
every eight minutes among specialty tables featuring a volunteer
physician from a particular specialty. Students and physicians can
choose the format at each table and there are no rules. At its core,
the event is a great experience for students to get real life commen-
tary from a practicing physician on his or her chosen specialty,
commentary that can be one helpful component as students discern
their path in medicine. More importantly, this signature program
embodies exactly what the medical society should be doing, uti-
lizing strength in its numbers and in years of experience to assist
future colleagues and build a clear sense of esprit de corps with
the society’s youngest members. The chance to converse with and
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
encourage medical students, our future colleagues, is a delight and
one to which I, and my fellow volunteer physicians, look forward
to. While the physicians participate and are motivated by this sense
of collegiality, enough to spend an evening back in the halls of the
medical school, my motivation as a primary care physician includes
a sense of urgency as medicine continues to see a decline in students
going into primary care fields.
Primary care is slated to be in short supply in this country soon,
if we are not already there. Judging by the challenges patients relay
to me in finding a new physician, I would surmise we have, indeed,
arrived. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a
shortage of between 21,100 and 55,200 primary care physicians
by 2032. While demand is driving this with an aging population
outstripping physician supply, fewer medical students are going
into primary care fields. Ominously, according to the 2019 Match
report, 8,116 internal medicine positions were offered, the highest
number on record, but only 41.5 percent were filled by students
in MD programs from US medical schools. While this trend can,
and must, be reversed, change will require education for medical
students to discover the joys of primary care medicine. Specialty
Speed Networking permits an opportunity to present an encouraging
face in primary care and convey the rewarding aspects of the field