SHM Converge 2025 was another successful meeting of the minds and gave me the opportunity to learn and network. This year was particularly special since the spring break of two of my children coincided with our national meeting. My family and I thought it would be fun for us to go to Las Vegas so we could spend quality time together when I was not at the conference. I knew we would engage in kid-friendly activities there, but little did I know that my daughters, Issa (12 years old) and Zara (9 years old), would immerse themselves completely into the exhibit hall and poster sessions beside me.
After a morning of attending didactic sessions on the first day of Converge, I reconnected with my mom and my daughters. First order of business was donning their SHM Converge lanyards, which they wore proudly. They felt like they were officially a part of the conference and their hospitalist mom’s posse. After we had lunch together, my kids went down each aisle of the exhibit hall and, afterwards, checked out the poster sessions in an adjacent room.
Their excitement was contagious. Everyone made them feel welcome and included. According to Issa, “When I walked into the exhibit hall, all the doctors and people there were really friendly.” The attendees and exhibitors were pleasantly surprised to see them there. The questions that Issa and Zara were commonly asked were if they wanted to be doctors in the future (the answer to that is a “maybe,” as becoming a doctor is Plan B for one of them at the moment), and if they were having fun (that was a definite “yes!”).
Per Zara, “The exhibit hall was my favorite. My favorite moment was spinning the wheels at the exhibit.” My fourth and sixth graders learned about disease processes, such as heart disease and COVID-19, from exhibitors in a fun way. They learned that there is a need for hospitalists across the country and in Canada, after meeting a variety of recruiters. Through this exposure, Issa and Zara peeked into my professional world, but it was the next experience that captured their imagination.
Issa and Zara shadowed me at the poster sessions that were held across from the exhibit hall. They unabashedly approached several presenters and asked them to explain their posters. They had insightful, follow-up questions for the presenters, and, in turn, these presenters answered them in a way that my daughters could understand. Zara said, “The presenters were really nice to me.” They both said they “heard about interesting cases.” Issa’s takeaway from the poster sessions was “to always take care of my body because disease is possible.”
My two younger daughters got a glimpse into my professional world of hospital medicine by attending SHM Converge 2025, and I wished my oldest daughter, Remy, could have been with us too, but she had school. I appreciated the family-friendly environment at this conference and the sense of belonging my daughters had at a professional meeting. SHM Converge enriched my perpetual balancing act of being a doctor mom by allowing my daughters to enjoy the exhibit hall and to learn at the poster sessions.
SHM Converge serves as an example for other professional conferences of interweaving work and family responsibilities at a conference. Several opinion pieces have noted the importance of the inclusion of families and having available and affordable childcare at conferences, to encourage and promote attendance of working parents.1,2 More innovative approaches to balancing childcare at professional society meetings are needed. Based on my family’s experiences at this year’s SHM Converge meeting, I know I am not the only one in my family looking forward to our next national meeting and seeing how families’ participation in the meeting evolves.
Dr. Ally is a hospitalist in the division of hospital medicine and a clinical professor in the department of medicine at UC San Diego Health in San Diego.
References
- Kass D, et al. Are children allowed? A survey of childcare and family policies at academic medical conferences. Acad Emerg Med. 2019;26(3):339-341. doi:10.1111/acem.13693.
- Swann N. Are we there yet?. Elife. 2019;8:e49202. doi:10.7554/eLife.49202