ASRM Today: Equity, Access, and Innovation, Episode Seven: ASRM 2024 Preview Part One

This episode of the ASRM Today podcast offers a preview of the ASRM 2024 Congress in Denver, Colorado. Jeffrey Hayes introduces guests Jamie Feingold and Jessica Medvedich, who discuss postgraduate courses available during the congress. Feingold highlights a course for new nurses in reproductive endocrinology, emphasizing the need for comprehensive education in fertility care. Medvedich describes a course focused on innovation and increasing access to reproductive care, addressing the challenges of integrating medical and business aspects in healthcare practices.

The seasons are changing. Fall is in the air, and today on the show, it's time to take a closer look at the upcoming ASRM 2024 Congress in Denver, Colorado. I'm Jeffrey Hayes, and this is ASRM Today.

Welcome to ASRM Today, a podcast that takes a deeper dive into the current topics in reproductive medicine. Episode 7, ASRM 2024 Preview Part 1. October is always an exciting time around the office as we get ready to engage with our members at our annual Congress. Today on the show, I want to highlight a few of the upcoming educational activities that touch on equity, access, and innovation that you can attend while in Denver.

First up is Jamie Feingold, a nurse and educator who specializes in women's health and specifically reproductive endocrinology and infertility in Rochester, New York, and is here to talk about the postgraduate course highlights for the new or novice REI nurse, which is happening on Sunday, October the 20th at ASRM 2024. How did you come to want to sort of put together this particular topic? Because getting a postgraduate course is much different than just doing a symposia or a roundtable. It's much more involved.

It's deeper. How did you come to want to put this together for further discussion and education? Well, I think it was sort of multifactorial. First, I really feel that nurses come to fertility almost like a blank slate.

It is such a unique subspecialty. You know, we have a lot of carryover from labor and delivery or gynecologic oncology or other women's health fields or even fields that are completely unrelated, but really fertility is a whole nother beast. And I feel like having a comprehensive course, even if it's just one day, allows people to sort of build their skills from the ground up and really get the foundation that they need in order to make them feel more empowered to take care of patients and provide better patient experiences.

I think we can all benefit from that. And then the second reason was that I was lucky enough to be invited to the Physician and APP Summit that took place in Nashville back in December of 2023, where one of the big things that we talked about was the variation in education that people receive when they start in the field of infertility, and that's specifically speaking to nurses and nurse practitioners. So being able to sort of remove some of that variation and provide, you know, this sort of one-stop shop for a down and dirty course on fertility for a new nurse will provide people with the skills that we think that they need in order to succeed in the field.

Is that what you hope this amalgamation of skills, as it were, is that what you hope people walk away from having better knowledge of these skills, you know, when they get the better understanding of it? Exactly. Yeah. So our course, we've sort of broken up the course into two pieces.

The morning is going to be a little intense. It's going to be didactic with a lot of, you know, fact-based learning. We're going to be talking about the menstrual cycle, reproductive pathways, IVF cycle types, testing and treatment protocols.

And then the afternoon, we're going to take a more lifestyle interventions and do some role-playing. How do we talk to patients? How do we interact with them in a way that's respectful and confident? And also discuss, you know, what we can do as nurses to make sure that we're functioning to our highest level in order to care for their patients the best that we can. Next, I talked with Jessica Medvedich, who serves as Executive Director of Clinical Operations for the IVI-RMA Network in North America.

She oversees quality assurance and staff education initiatives, monitors compliance and ensures superior service is maintained across the network. She collaborates with leadership to ensure continuous process improvement, patient satisfaction and safety. And join me to talk about the postgraduate course, Think Big, Breaking Boundaries, Increasing Access, Generating Innovation, which is happening Saturday, October the 19th at ASRM 2024.

I'm just curious about how did you want to come to put this together, this particular topic, because it's hard making a postgraduate course and trying to wrangle all these things. And I'm just curious about that, about putting this together. What was the impetus? Well, this, I have to say, the initial submission was done by my colleague on the ARM Board, April Rudder, who was the creator of this agenda and sort of this program.

I am in the midst of actually planning 2025 because I'll be the incoming chair of the Association for Reproductive Managers. And so I am chairing this in place of April. So the development was all her.

I can only give her credit for that. And, you know, I think we were really looking to go along with, you know, the theme of the Congress in general and expand upon that from a business perspective and look at those partnerships and how we are all, you know, working together to expand access and really innovate within the industry. Have you found in your career and your research then that this meeting of things, right, the meeting of the corporate with the meeting of the medical, is just such a difficult thing for a lot of people to wrap their head around? Yeah, it's definitely challenging.

And I've seen actually, you know, many discussions on this topic sort of coming to fruition, especially as, you know, more private equity groups get involved and we have these outside management companies sort of leading these medical practices. I think it's becoming a conversation that's had more frequently in balancing how do we run the business of medicine versus the practice of medicine? Because you come at it from, you know, definitely different angles that have to kind of come together and meet in the middle and work through it. So, I think it's something that's being discussed at a lot of not only conferences, but, you know, at conference tables across the world at this point.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

And that sounds like that's a major takeaway. And I want to ask you one more thing, then. What's another takeaway that you hope people will have spending the day with you and these speakers and being in this postgraduate course? What do you hope people walk away from having a better understanding of? I think, you know, as we as an industry come together to look at challenges as a group, I think one of the biggest discussions is obviously there's the science and the innovation and there's the desire to make sure that as many people as possible leave us with the families that they desire to create.

And there's the science and technology that goes along with that. But there are so many other factors that come into play, including access. You know, right now we're not in a position where everyone has the same opportunities.

We're also, as success rates and things in the lab kind of start to catch up, you know, we have to look at other needs that patients have. And those needs are always changing, whether it be generational or economical or, you know, even things that are going on in the world that impact fertility and, you know, the rates at which people are creating their families. It's coming together to really understand how we're going to approach all of those unique challenges together.

And I think what that's really great about ASRM and about the Congress and about even the professional groups that make up all of these PG courses and symposiums and such is that it's very collaborative and it's not a competition. It's really everybody working together to increase access, to look at these other ways that we can improve everything from the patient experience, patient education, in addition to all of, you know, the science and the embryology and the technology and AI and all of these other things that are coming across and, you know, and having to become very frequent conversations about how we're going to build our, not only our practice, but the standard of care. These are just a small sample of the type of activities in store for attendees this year, and we will be back with part two next week to preview a few more.

Until next time, I'm Jeffrey Hayes, and this is ASRM Today. This concludes this episode of ASRM Today. For show notes, author information, and discussions, go to ASRMtoday.org. This material is copyrighted by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and may not be reproduced or used without express consent from ASRM.

ASRM Today series podcasts are supported in part by the ASRM Corporate Member Council. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of ASRM and its affiliates. These are provided as a source of general information and are not a substitute for consultation with a physician.