KANSAS CITY, Missouri – Jeffrey Pennings and Kelly Stanley, 3rd year medical students, represented CUSOM at the 2015 American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Conference for Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students in Kansas City, Missouri.
Stanley is a North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians (NCAFP) Foundation Student Trustee and represented North Carolina medical students in this capacity at the conference. Pennings, student director elect of NCAFP, served as the North Carolina delegate in the student congress sessions at the conference voting in the elections for the 2015-2016 student leadership, and Stanley also voted on resolutions put forward by students and residents that covered various healthcare issues. As a student member of the AAFP, Stanley also had the opportunity to vote on many of these matters.
“The conference was an excellent opportunity for both Kelly and I to advocate for Family Medicine and our future patients,” said Pennings. “It was also a time to network with the students and physicians who share our same interests.”
In addition to networking and promoting North Carolina and Campbell University, the students had an opportunity to visit the EXPO hall where over the 300 family medicine residencies from across the country were represented.
“We are already thinking about residency applications – the next step in our medical education,” said Pennings. “We had the opportunity to talk with many of these programs to learn more about their curriculums, opportunities to do rotations during 3rd and 4th year as well as what they value in applicants.”
“The AAFP national conference was such a great experience for me,” shared Kelly Stanley. “I was able to get an early look at many different residency programs across the country, talk to excited students and passionate physicians, and partook in inspiring lectures. The conference got me even more excited about the specialty of family medicine”
In the closing ceremony of the conference, Dr. Robert Wergin’s, president of AAFP, acknowledged the two medical students from Campbell in his end of conference speech. “Dr. Wergin mentioned us during his comments – sharing that we are osteopathic students from Campbell, and stating what a great program we have here, and how important Osteopathic Medicine has become in the need for increased primary care. We thought that was pretty neat!”