Want to start a MS group at med school - ANY TIPS?

Hi, everyone!

I'm glad to be here! Maybe you can help me.

My husband successfully completed his first year of med school . We have been married 10 years and have 3 young kids - needless to say, this is a second career for him, and a big switch for us. I'm a "SAHM" now, but doing a smidgin of freelance writing on the side for the media company I used to work for full time. (I'm lucky - my husband was a SAHD for two years!)

Anyway, a fellow Medical Spouse and I are trying to get a MS group started at the school here. Any tips or ideas? I've looked at the AMA Alliance web site a little bit - should we just start a chapter of that? or? What have you found successful?

Thanks for any ideas/comments!

ccvqueen

[Vanquisher]

Where are you in SC? If you're at USC, drop me a PM, and we can get together and have coffee. I will try not to scare you and only steer you down the ROAD to success.

Good luck. I have found that starting medspouse groups is VERY challenging and a ton of work that isn't always rewarded. My best advice is to see what the climate is like for starting a group, then decide if it is worth it or not.

If you live in Columbia, it isn't worth it. Just hang out with me. I'm totally awesome.

I am sure someone here will have excellent advice. I have never been able to get a group like this off the ground very far. In medical school, not enough people were married. In residency, it just hasn't worked for a variety of reasons. I know that other places have groups that are very successful though.

[Meenah]

I say hang out with Heidi, she is awesome!!!!

sorry, I don't have any advice to help you. there was no spouse's group when my dh was in med school - but we were really too busy to participate even if there was!

i agree - hang out with Heidi

I am a member of the Alliance in my state and I am the student/resident rep. It is very difficult to start a student partner group because many of the students are not married. The alliance, many times, is older doctor's wives who don't work and so the events are during the weekdays. For most of us who are married to medical students we have to work so those don't work for us. I would make sure that you make them family friendly, have opportunities to have events in the evenings for those who work and I would contact your alliance because they can get a lot of info from the schools that you would not have access to.

At the U of MN during the orientation they have a session for partners and the alliance speaks at it. Since the orientation is during the day, again, most are not able to attend. I found out about it through my husbands orientation packet of info, there was just a little flyer.

I have tried to do more for students but i have found that people are so busy it doesn't work as well for students and it does for say, residents.

But good luck! I think it's really important! PM me if you have any specific questions. I did go to the national conference last year in Chicago so I know quite a bit about how it all works!

Welcome!

[fluffhead]

I have no advice - just wanted to comment that when I saw the subject line, my first thought was "isn't medical school a bit early to decide to specialize in one disease (multiple sclerosis)?"
got my head stuck in neuro.

[planet]

I'll let you know more after tomorrow when we have our first bbq. I am the third person in the last 5 years to try organizing a group so I did go with the state medical society. I was forewarned by the last person to organize something that she was the only person putting in a ton of effort to get and keep things going. I wanted to have something that could continue if I put in a lot of effort.

It has taken more time than I thought. If your school's student affairs office (GME for residents) will work with you they can make life much easier. The other advantage I found in doing this through the med society, besides funding, is that it covers all area hospitals, which broadens the scope of poeple you get to meet. I have been surprised to find that WOW there are a lot of seriously over qualified Family Med IMGs who have already completed training in other countries and other specialties and so far have been among the most interesting folks I have met. But getting off track...

To minimize your part I think just doing everything digitally and letting the school's office handle sending out emails or posting a link to a website would save a ton of time. The disadvantage to going with the Alliance for me has been that the group is mostly older and in a different phase and also not as eager to embrace computer conveniences. This just makes it a touch more work for me.

Ask yourself what the point is for the group. Like Lily, you might not mesh with others if it is for friendship. A good number of people that do residency here fall in love and decide to stay so we're having a more network heavy focus. In the local moms group there's an organized meal plan that has members bring meals to moms with new babies for the first two weeks. A friend who has since moved on to life in attendingworld (lucky b*tch) and I had talked about having call night dinner deliveries. I'm not going to do it, but we found it fun to brainstorm on what would be dreamy cool to have in a spouse group.

Pm me if you want any details on what I've been doing out here.

thanks for the tips

thanks to all who replied! even to "fluffhead," for two reasons: my kids got the most delightful giggles looking at your avatar over my shoulder, and you confirmed my suspicion that I should have spelled out "MS."

so, "planet," how did the bbq go? I think that you and lady0880 had a lot of good tips. Will probably pm you soon when we get into more of the details. Need to talk to my coconspirator - she has one kid, I have three, so she is the default leader. We're still working out what the goals are. But I see them as: getting info and support out to the spouses who want it, and helping with some type of community health project (to get the group outside itself and to identify more with our med students). and of course, making friends!!!

you guys added another bonus: meeting med spouses at different stages and ages, when you go through the alliance. So we may start there.

We'll let you know how it goes! Send me more brainstorms if you have them.

-ccvqueen

[planet]

It was good and not so good. We had a poor resident turnout, but the current (attending level) crowd was strong and it was actually a perfect day, good time. It served to refocus the group a bit toward asking more about purpose and direction. The main focus has been on community health and events. There was substantial talk about returning to more social and support oriented. Membership in general has really fallen in the last few (I don't know if this means 5, 10, 20??) years. As a result the same group of spouses have gone through their training days and are now long into the life beyond. The upside was that the turnout of docs was good and they had fun. Now there's more enthusiasm than before about helping/supporting the resident families. But if they don't show....

I committed to putting in effort for the next two years. That means helping organize things, providing babysitting at meetings, doing leg work on making it known that the group exists. Then the torch passes. Maybe I'm not the best person for it...I think I scared one couple (about to marry, move together, major changes, intern year). But I'm the one who volunteered. :P

I'd like to hear your ideas too... this is my first time trying this.

[MDPhDWife]

ccvqueen! Don't have any advice to offer in terms of starting the group, but wanted to say welcome anyway!

Fluff I am That's exactly the kind of thing I tend to do!

Good for you!

For our MS group in medical school, we often used the med school emailing system either through the school or our spouse to advertise events and get people interested. Usually we had a beginning of the year get together or picnic so that the MSI's could come and bring their spouse and meet some other spouses and families. Potluck works awesome. We would provide drinks and some main dish and we had TONS of food.
We found that we had one population of people who did not have children and some who did, so we planned a variety of events.

We did lots of "Ladies Night Out" type activities and then we would have a Halloween Party or Christmas Party for the kids. Sometimes we had the family activities at the med school in the cafeteria. So there was plenty of room for everyone.

If you can get the support of your med school, your group can be really successful. You may even want to collaborate with others who are out there and you don't even know it. Its nice to know that the group will continue when you are gone if possible.

Oh! We did eventually get affiliated with the AAOA chapter, but I would do it anyway even if you don't get affiliated. Sometimes the paperwork is tiresome. I am not sure what's required for the AMA.

GOOD LUCK!