What the Society actually does, which is considerably more eating than educating.
Nothing here is scheduled far in advance. Word goes out, a room gets booked, and an unreasonable number of very busy men clear an evening.
The titles are a running joke and have been since the first gathering. The Society assigns itself continuing education credit for watch parties and deep sea fishing. Nobody is fooled, least of all us.
Dinners, mostly in private rooms, occasionally at somebody’s house.
Every member brings the case he still thinks about. Ten minutes, one image, no lead-up. A room this broad means somebody here has seen it before, and finding out who is the entire exercise.
The year-end dinner. Awards conferred for Most Curbside Consults Fielded After 11 PM, Longest Unread Thread, and Best Unsolicited Second Opinion. Bhangra where it cannot be prevented.
One long table, no program, no speeches, no slides. The menu is set by a member with strong and correct views on the subject, and the meat is sourced by one with stronger ones.
Early, after prayers, before every man here is claimed for the rest of the day.
Football, smoked meat, and the annual dispute over who owns the smoker.
The most reliably attended thing the Society does, by a considerable margin.
The founding tradition. Same house, same arguments, more people every year.
Attendance historically exceeds every clinical gathering combined.
A run against an over forty league, arranged by a member who commissions it and has quietly been scouting this group for two years. Ophthalmology guards the paint. Pediatrics needs to be stopped.
Where the Society goes when a dinner is not enough.
Two nights offsite. The scientific program is real, genuinely excellent, and scheduled at 7:00 AM so that the syllabus is defensible and attendance is zero. What actually happens is golf, dinner, and one very good unscheduled conversation about practice ownership.
Several nights, international, destination chosen by member vote and routed by the member who has never once paid retail for a seat. Stated objective: comparative health systems observation. Actual objective: uninterrupted days with people you like.
A full day charter, led by the one member who actually knows what he is doing out there. Not a scopolamine patch among us, and a standing wager on who goes down first. Anaesthesia is favoured.
A morning at the range and an afternoon on the mats, both under instruction from the one member qualified to run either. The rest of us discover our cardiovascular risk profile empirically.
The rare occasions when something useful breaks out. Never more than one per gathering, and never on purpose.
One member sets medical policy at a national payer. For one evening he answers the questions the rest of us are otherwise required to submit through a portal. Denials, prior authorisation, contracting, and where the leverage actually sits for a practice this size. Nothing leaves the room.
Interventional cardiology and vascular surgery meet at the table to settle who owns the vessel below the knee. Neither concedes. Moderated by a neurosurgeon on the grounds that he has no stake and considerable stage experience.
One surgeon who fixes it in ninety minutes, and one anaesthesiologist who insists on doing it the long way, at 4:45 in the morning, on a machine. The debate has never been settled and never will be.
Exactly what it sounds like. Bring the film.
A member arrives with the laptop and will read your study between courses, unprompted, correctly. This is not scheduled. It simply happens, every time.
The gatherings that are not about us.
A member returns from a humanitarian mission abroad and tells the room what it was actually like. The cases, the constraints, and what a group like this one could have sent that would have mattered.
The idea the Society keeps circling: the whole membership staffing a free clinic for a single Saturday. This many specialties in one building is a rare thing for an uninsured patient to walk into, and rarer still to walk out of with a real referral.
Members will notice that our internal materials assign continuing education credit to dinners, watch parties, and one deep sea fishing charter. This is a joke, sustained at our own expense, and has been from the beginning. The Society is not accredited, offers no continuing medical education, and awards nothing that any board, hospital, insurer, or spouse recognises.