Past president: Students, residents play vital roles in AAFP leadership

What was your first national leadership role as a student or resident?

Blackwelder: My first exposure to National Conference was as a chief resident at the Medical College of Georgia. I had gone to medical school at Emory, which didn’t have a family medicine department at the time. I didn’t really know about the AAFP until my chief resident year. They said, “You’re going to Kansas City in the summer.” They didn’t prepare me for it. I remember that I was really impressed with everything happening, but I especially felt pulled to the resident congress. I came back and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I stayed at MCG for a fellowship, which allowed me to come back to National Conference as a senior chief resident and run for alternate resident delegate to the congress of delegates. That let me get my foot in the door to an elected position. I definitely caught the advocacy bug, and it ended up changing my life and career trajectory in a very unexpected way.

When you’re at FUTURE, there’s just so much energy about family medicine and advocacy, and you are surrounded by good people who are really trying to make a difference by changing things for the better.

What are the key takeaways you hope students and residents from your FUTURE session on leadership?

Blackwelder: Finding your voice is about pondering some very practical questions. One is what do you want to change? Two is what do you know about it? You’ve got to become informed before you advocate. Three, how do you identify the right tables to be at? Be willing to recognize how best to lend your voice at the right table at the right time in the right way. Sometimes to advocate smartly, it takes reframing the question to be able to do what you want to do.

I’m confident any attendee, whether they’re a medical student, resident or faculty, can leave with a couple of tools that will help them move whatever issue it is they want to move forward to the next level. It’s often not about patient care. It’s often about your personal standing as a physician or a family doc. It might be your situation in medical school or residency. It might be a community issue.

A lot of the people who come to FUTURE are already leaders doing amazing things, but the skills we’ll discuss can take even experienced people to another level. They’re tools I learned during my time in Academy leadership development. The AAFP staff trained me well, and so I’m bringing back a lot of the skills and tools that I learned from the Academy.

What do you say to students and residents, who might experience imposter syndrome when considering a leadership role, about stepping out of their comfort zones?

Blackwelder: Students going into their fourth year, obviously, are going to be looking for a residency in the exhibit hall. Selling themselves to lots of programs can feel uncomfortable, but it is also fun because everyone is really open and friendly. For students in their second or third years, many are just trying to get a handle on all that is going on at FUTURE. The education sessions are always amazing and exciting. However, I’m going to challenge anybody who comes to at least spend a few minutes in the congress sessions because that’s where you have a chance to see the impact students and residents have in influencing policy, and not just for the Academy. Students and residents are often on the forefront of key issues that congress votes on. A lot of students go into medicine to help people, and advocacy can help people at a very high level.

The good news is that at FUTURE, these are your friends, your peers—no one is an imposter! These are people who are just as experienced, or inexperienced, as you are. There’s not a huge hierarchy, so it is a chance to put your name out there. It’s a chance to challenge yourself to run for something, even throwing your hat in the ring to give a speech. Many people don’t like public speaking, yet physicians, by our nature, are leaders, and public speaking is a useful skill to hone. This is a great group of people to practice with because you’ve got phenomenal mentors in terms of Academy staff and officers. The AAFP speaker and vice speaker are everywhere, helping move things forward. Many of the board members will be there, and they are committed to our students and our residents, who are recognized as the conscience of the Academy because they bring some of the most profound truths to medicine that many of us folks further along in our careers might have forgotten.

Students and residents should recognize you have more to offer and more to say about really important things than you may believe. Many people who come to this meeting are going to be advocates, but they may not recognize it yet.

The AAFP has had many student and resident leaders from Tennessee. What do you tell your own mentees about the benefits of getting involved and balancing those benefits against the time commitment?

Blackwelder: Family physicians are all about relationships and stories. Part of my teaching and mentoring style is that I tell stories, and one of the stories I tell is how I got involved in advocacy. I create a comfortable place, saying, “This isn’t for everybody, and you don’t have to do it at the level I’ve done it, but there are many ways to begin to learn about this.” So, I start that when I meet the first-year students at Quillen. I have a significant number of students who have some interest in leadership and advocacy, and I do what I can to nurture that. Time restrictions can feel daunting that first year or two, but many Quillen students have jumped into leadership roles, such as FMIG regional coordinators or even AAFP commissions, and managed those roles smoothly.

In their third year, when they do family medicine rotations, I have another chance to talk about health care reform and about the decisions that impact how we practice medicine. At that level, I often get another group of students who now are thinking about family medicine or about what would it mean to advocate in their own specialty. So, I’m able to catch them at a time where they understand more and have a little more flexibility and time.

I tell medical students and residents that their main job is to survive and succeed in their training. But if advocacy is something you’re excited about and it does not create difficulties for you, then it becomes one more way of making a difference in the world. The good news is being a medical student on an AAFP commission is not an unreasonable amount of work. And these experiences provide mentoring and networking opportunities in addition to learning.

I also reassure students: You’re not a content expert. If you are on a commission, you get the same large meeting agenda everybody else does, but it’s not your job to review congressional policy. Your job is to look at the topics and provide a unique perspective. How does this issue impact students? What’s the role a student might have in this? Those who step forward start to realize they really do have something to bring to the table.

You’re also returning to FUTURE as a mentor in the AAFP Foundation’s Emerging Leader Institute. Why are you excited about that program?

Blackwelder: This is another powerful Academy offering where I’ve done what I can to encourage people. Two of my students applied and were accepted into this year’s cohort. I’m actually going to be mentor for one of them, Ally Franklin, who’s just an amazing person. My other student, Connor Belcher, has met with me since day one to pursue his dream of becoming a family physician. Ariel Petty was one of my past ELI mentees, and she now is on the AAFP Board. This process has been a blast because I get structured approaches to continuing to impact folks that the Academy has already identified as being not just a future leader, but a current leader who’s growing.

Any final thoughts on FUTURE?

Blackwelder: I cannot overemphasize the energy and the positivity this conference has every year. You can’t come to FUTURE and not have it do something for you. It may solidify your path to family medicine. You may meet the residency you never expected, and that becomes where you spend the rest of your life. You may find some aspect of being a medical student and a resident that you never suspected, and it changes your life. It totally redefines the direction you take.

 I want everybody be open to the excitement and the uncertainty and not get overwhelmed. Just take it in and think, “OK, now how do I build this into the physician I’m becoming as I move forward?”