CME= Continuing Medical Education. One of the most daunting challenges of being a physician is staying current. You have to commit to a lifetime of learning. We do this in a variety of ways, reading journals, searching the literature and attending educational lectures. Dr. Wallace and I subscribe to The New England Journal of Medicine, The Annals of Internal Medicine, The Medical Letter, Physician’s First Watch and JAMA, to name a few. We also search patients medical conditions on UpToDate, a constantly updated medical search engine to which we subscribe. We are both members of the Texas Club of Internists, https://www.texasclubofinternists.org/amsimis/
an almost 100 year old organization comprised of internists from around the state of Texas who have a passion for learning. I was fortunate to have been president of the club as well as it’s foundation. We normally have two meetings a year. The first is in state and is rotated around the 7 club districts in Texas. The second is out of state and has been held in almost every major city in the US and Canada that have medical schools is it’s 96 years. Covid-19 interrupted that streak of meetings, but as with many things, the club has gone virtual to keeps it’s members connected and educated. Friday evening, we settled in the kitchen with my laptop and a pizza to listen to Dr. Robert Haley update us on vaccines for Covid19. https://utswmed.org/doctors/robert-haley/ I have mentioned Dr. Haley before. His father was a club member and his brother is a member. He started the Department of Epidemiology at UT Southwestern. He has spoken to the club on such diverse topics as Gulf War Syndrome (on which he is a world authority), Ebola in Dallas, Zika, West Nile Virus, Global Warming and Covid -19.
One of the highlights of his lecture was learning that the antibody response to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is much more robust than from even a severe infection. The antibody response to an infection is dependent on the severity of the infection. People with mild infections are more susceptible to getting it again. Everyone is going to want one of these vaccines when they are available. The more people take them, the closer we will get to herd immunity and some semblance of our old lives .
