Governor’s Corner
Chris Knight, MD FACP
I want to open this newsletter with a huge shout-out of gratitude to our Chapter Meeting planning committee for organizing an amazing meeting, to the fantastic speakers who gave us their time, energy, and wisdom, and most of all to the hundreds of you who returned to Bell Harbor Conference Center to meet in person the first week in November. It was incredible to see everyone. For those who couldn’t make it, please see below for our chapter award winners and winners of the abstract competition and Doctors’ Dilemma. Our 2023 program planning committee is already hard at work on the agenda for this November. In-person attendance this year will be crucial in deciding whether the meeting is sustainable at Bell Harbor, so if you are able to, please join us on November 3rd & 4th, 2023!
We’ve turned a corner at the beginning of 2023–as happens every year, the days are getting longer in our corner of the US and some of us are looking forward to the return of green leaves and cherry blossoms just over the horizon. Optimistically, I’m hoping that the COVID landscape is changing, too; the winter surge in COVID cases has been modest in Washington State. It’s a sign of the deep and complex impact of the pandemic on our state’s health care that many of us are greeting the proposed end of the national public health emergency on May 11th not with delight but with some skepticism and concern–what will change and will it be for the better? Thankfully ACP has already successfully advocated for maintaining Medicare reimbursement for telemedicine services through the end of 2024, but there is more work to be done. The public health emergency’s end date is less than two weeks before ACP’s Leadership Day on May 23rd and 24th. This organized visit to Washington DC by hundreds of internal medicine physicians to will be ideally timed to advocate for ACP policy–I hope that some of you will be able to join us in that Washington as we meet with our elected legislators from this one. Until then, wishing all of you a happy and healthy winter-into-spring season!
Washington Chapter Speakers at IM2023 in San Diego!
- Internal Medicine 2023 registration is open! Join us in San Diego for a world-class conference. Don’t forget to check out the speakers from Washington Chapter. This includes:
- Carrie Horwitch, “Medical Improv: Novel Method to Improve Communication Skills with Empathy”
- Stephen Hunt, “A Brief Military History: The Key to Good Health Care for Veterans in Your Practice”
- Catherine Johnston, “Clinical Triad: Prognosis, Cancer Screening, and Deprescribing: When Should We Stop?”
- Joshua Liao, “Succeeding in Value-Based Payment in Private Practice”
- Douglas Paauw, “What Medications Should We Be Wary Of?: The Fine Print”
- Lauren Weber, “Cardiovascular Risk Reduction and Lipid Management: How Low Should You Go?”
Chris Knight, Governor || Washington Chapter – American College of Physicians
clknightfacp@fastmail.com

We had a hybrid chapter meeting last fall, with both live and remote speakers captivating the audience gathered in person and via zoom at Bell Harbor. We started off the main meeting with a COVID symposium with three brilliant speakers addressing therapeutics, post-covid conditions and pandemic preparedness.The meeting was packed with sessions focused on core clinical medicine and workshops covering key areas including physician wellness, advocacy, volunteering and medical education. We were honored to have Dr John Vassall himself deliver in person, the titular annual John Vassall lecture on equity and justice, addressing racial disparities in health care. Another thought provoking session was the Society and Medicine plenary by Dr Priya Fielding Singh on food and nutritional inequality in America. As always, Dr Moe Hagman kept us entertained and on the edge with her power packed jeopardy contest. We had a lively debate session on diverticulitis and antibiotics with two compelling speakers–the audience had a tough time choosing sides, and the debate ended in a tie.
We are grateful for all the speakers and the audience who took the time to come together as a closely knit medical community, celebrating internal medicine despite the travails of the pandemic. We look forward to seeing you all again in November 2023.

Our abstract winners with Abstract Chair Dr. Ananth Shenoy
2022 Abstract Competition
- Medical Student Poster
- Taylor Kennedy, University of Washington (Non-toxigenic Corynebacterium Diphtheria Native Mitral Valve Endocarditis with Multifocal Septic Emboli)
- ACP Resident Poster
- Joscelyn Hodge, Madigan Medical Center (Hint Hint Cough Cough: An Unusual Presentation of a Liver Abscess)
- SHM Resident Poster
- Matthew Kon, Skagit Regional Health (A case of Ceftriaxone induced autoimmune hemolytic anemia highlights importance of inpatient drug monitoring)
- ACP Resident Oral Presentation
- Ryan Liberg, Madigan Medical Center (A Heartbreaking Case of Constrictive Pericarditis)
- SHM Resident Oral Presentation
- Alexandria Jaksha, Madigan Army Medical Center (A Case of “Slushy” Atrial Fibrillation)
Thank you to all our participating medical students and residents and the mentors who support them and to our judges and ACP staff for helping make the competition a success! We are looking forward to seeing you at our Spring Scientific Day in May.

Doctor’s Dilemma Winner
2022 Washington Chapter Awards
We have so many amazing Chapter members – in this unprecedented and historically challenging year we celebrate the following individuals:

Gary Forbes
Alvin J. Thompson Internist of the Year

Matthew Hollon, MD MPH FACP
Washington Chapter Laureate Award

Meghan Roberts, MD FACP
Hospitalist of the Year

Elizabeth Gabay, MD
Community Service Award

Cathrine Wheeler, MD FACP
Kemi Nakabayashi Chapter Service Award

Rachel Safran, MD FACP
Golden Apple Award

Michael Kerkering, MD
Clinician - Educator of the Year

Amineta Sy
Douglas S. Paauw MD Outstanding Student in Internal Medicine Award
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences

Nancy Miles
Douglas S. Paauw MD Outstanding Student in Internal Medicine Award
University of Washington School of Medicine

Olivia Wang
Douglas S. Paauw MD Outstanding Student in Internal Medicine Award
Elson S Floyd College of Medicine
2023 Annual Meeting Co-Chairs

Nkeiruka Duze, MD FACP

Raman Palabindala, MD MBA FACP
We are excited to announce our next two annual meeting Co-Chairs who are already off and running planning this year’s event! Both individuals stood up a dynamite precourse for 2022 and are looking forward to carrying forward the legacy of staging one of the best ACP annual scientific meetings in the country.
- Nkeiruka Duze, MD FACP is a primary care internal medicine physician at Virginia Mason and within the Chapter is on our Executive Council and on our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion subcommittee. She co-chaired the Outpatient Pre-Course in 2022.
- Raman Palabindala, MD MBA FACP is a hospitalist and Regional Medical Director at Optum. He co-chaired the Inpatient Pre-Course in 2022
They will be supported this year by another amazing Planning Committee and the following Pre-Course Co-Chairs:
Outpatient Pre-Course
- Nina Tan, MD
- Anna Troncales, MD
Inpatient Pre-Course
- Ronald Huang, MD
- Sandra Law, MD
2023 Annual Spring Scientific Day – Abstract Submissions Open!
Abstracts Due: March 19th, 2023
Spring Scientific Day: Friday, May 19th, 2023
Objectives:
Format:
Awards:
•The Top Place Resident Oral Presentation awardee wins attendance to the National ACP Conference in 2024 in Boston!
Wellbeing Corner
By Carrie Horwitch, MD MACP
Narrative medicine or expressive writing is a way to bring in the power of storytelling.
Story slam has been incorporated into ACP national and also WA ACP meetings for several years.
These practices encompass creating awareness, meaning and understanding of the patient story as well as our own as clinicians. It can help to acknowledge patients uniqueness, improve empathy and improve communication through active listening.
Writing can also bring potential health/physical benefits ( Smyth –JAMA Vol 281, no 14, Simon Am J Med 2013, April).
I have been involved with a narrative writing group for several months and have found the experience to be quite rewarding – not only to help develop writing skills, but also to share stories from being a doctor that have had meaning for me.
We want to start a narrative medicine/expressive writing opportunity for our WA ACP chapter. We hope this will be a monthly meeting.
We invite you to join us on Thursday March 30 at 7pm- 8pm for our first session. No writing experience needed.
Please email Liz Truong liz@aminc.org if interested or Carrie Horwitch carrieho@comcast.net
Health and Public Policy Committee Update
By Stephanie Fosback, MD FACP & Chris Wong, MD, HPPC Co-Chairs


The Washington State ACP Health and Public Policy Committee (HPPC) continues to meet the second Monday of every month over Zoom. The commitment of the physicians in this group and their passion for healthcare reform is contagious. If you have interest in healthcare reform and all things advocacy, please join us!
Working with ACP to shape policy:
- Industry-Free Meetings: Our ACP resolution on phasing out industry sponsorship at the ACP Annual Meeting has been approved by our chapter and is going to the Board of Governors to be considered for adoption. Washington State ACP is proud that we made our own state conference “pharma free” several years ago and hope that this precedent can inspire ACP’s national meeting to do the same. Our committee hopes to show that as physicians we are free free of outside influence on our learning and are committed to help reduce the cost of drugs to patients who bear the burden of these “advertisements”.
- Paid Sick Leave: Our Paid Sick Leave resolution was adopted by the Board of Governors last year and will be worked on by ACP committees. There is currently no federal guarantee of paid sick leave in the United States, leaving many workers having to choose between illness and work, and making it more likely people will work while sick or contagious.
- MSM Blood Donation: Our resolutions seeks to strengthen ACP’s policy by actively opposing the FDA’s ban on blood donations from people who identify as MSM.
Washington State legislative policy:
- Coordination between facility providers and PCPs: The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) resolution “B3”–The goal of this resolution is to protect individuals who are in care facilities from experiencing medication errors when they have multiple prescribing providers.- We brought this resolution to the WSMA house of delegates last fall and it was referred for further discussion and refinement, with the intent to balance the need for both care coordination and efficiency of care.
- WSMA Legislative Summit: WSMA’s annual Legislative Summit is Feb 3, 2023, back in person in Olympia. We have several members attending to help move healthcare in the right direction in Washington state. The WSMA priorities include Medicaid reimbursement rate increases, abortion access and reproductive health, standardizing the prior authorization process, and preventing inappropriate scope-of practice increases.
Other goals:
Our committee is brainstorming how to help with homelessness and its criminalization, race/ethnicity issues in medical journals, non-compete clauses, social media harms, and reproductive access among other issues.
We are grateful to every Internal Medicine Physician and their work. Thank you for all that you do every day. We hope that we can work together to makes the lives of our patients and their physicians healthier!
Joey Parker’s Teaching Corner
A photojournalism professor in Florida once performed an experiment for a semester with his class. Half the class would be graded on a single picture turned in at the end of the year. It had to meet all kinds of metrics to be graded. The other half were graded on the number of pictures they turned in – they had to turn in 100 at the end of the semester. Interestingly enough, the half that were graded on quantity blew the other half out of the water. As it turns out, the students who only had to turn one photo in didn’t get much done. They were too busy trying to create the perfect photo. The other group went out and experimented with different lenses, color schemes, and back drops. They made mistakes and then improved upon those errors. Voltaire told us, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We don’t need to be perfect teachers to be effective. We don’t need to have the perfect chalk talk, the perfect lecture, the perfect answer to learner’s questions – what we need is to start, to experiment, to teach from your “sweet spot” and see what works and what doesn’t. As we kick off 2023, don’t let the absence of a perfect teaching lecture get in the way of being present with your learners and teaching what you do know.
Membership Updates
From Gary Forbes & Mary Anderson, Membership Committee Co-Chairs
The committee has a broad mandate to support ACP members throughout their careers. Its principal tasks are recruiting and retaining members and supporting advancement to fellowship, as well as increasing members’ satisfaction with the offerings of the chapter. The state chapter is over 2600 members strong, with stable rolls despite the many challenges of the past 3 years.
We are looking for members in all regions of Washington State interested in helping the committee brainstorm ways the chapter might better support YOUR practice life, such as local or statewide CME offerings, or regional gatherings. Even if you are, like many of us, hesitant to add to an already busy life, your ideas are most welcome! Please consider contacting the committee at gforbes@jeffersonhealthcare.org with your thoughts.
We’ll communicate events as they are scheduled, and as always, thank you for your continued membership in the College.

Congratulations to the Parker Family!
Congratulations to ACP Members Joey Parker and Ana Parker on the birth of their second child! We welcome new baby brother seen pictured here with dad and proud big brother!
WA ACP Hospitalist Council Presents: Updates in Hospital Medicine
Monday, March 27th from 4:00PM – 5:00PM
The WA ACP Hospitalist Council would like to invite you to an “Updates in Hospital Medicine” webinar on Monday, March 27th from 4pm-5pm. Dr.Yilin Zhang will be presenting an evidence-based review of notable or practice-changing articles in the field of Hospital Medicine published within the last year.
Dr Yilin Zhang is a board-certified internal medicine physician with a special interest in medical education and care for patients with complex chronic diseases such as end-stage liver disease and solid organ transplant. She received her Bachelors of Science in biology from Duke University and a medical doctoral degree from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She completed her internship and residency training in internal medicine at University of Washington. She worked as an academic hospitalist in general internal medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) from 2016 – 2020. While on faculty at UWMC, she was involved in clinical education for the internal medicine residency program and the School of Medicine. This included the development of an online medical education website, teachIM.org. She is currently the clinical coordinator of inpatient medicine for the family medicine residency at Valley Medical Center.
Updates From National:
Group Rates for National IM2023!
If you’re interested in going as a group and saving some money, ACP offers a discounted rate for groups of ten or more; each attendee saves $125 on registration. Note that Resident/Fellow Members, Physicians in-training, and Medical Students cannot be included in the registrant list for group discounts.
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