SHM’s annual meeting was a Texas-sized birthday party for a teenager. Fifteen years after the term “hospitalist” was coined, more than 2,500 hospitalists, residents, nonphysician providers, and at least one pharmacist attended HM11 May 10-13 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.

The four-day celebration of all things HM drew arguably its most impressive batch of speakers, including AMA President Cecil Wilson, MD, and Robert

Kocher, MD, a former special assistant to President Obama. Robert Wachter, MD, MHM, who coauthored the term “hospitalist,” gave the penultimate address.

But attendees say the value of the meeting wasn’t the speeches, the more than 100 breakout sessions, or the endless networking opportunities. It was all of it.

“People talking about how excited they are about hospitalized medicine, you’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this,’ ” said first-time attendee Randa Perkins, MD, chief resident at Tallahassee Memorial’s Family Medicine Residency Program in Florida. “You feel like it is ‘Braveheart’!”