Traditions, surprises at Internal Medicine Meeting 2025

Even after many years of attending ACP's Internal Medicine Meeting, Alan Dow, MD, FACP, is surprised by all the medical knowledge he picks up.

Last year, for example, Dr. Dow, chair of the division of hospital medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, happened upon a rheumatology talk and gathered much more new, relevant information from this subspecialty lecture than he expected.

“There's sessions you go to where you know you're going to learn something, and there's other ones that you are just pleasantly surprised by how much you learned,” said Dr. Dow, who is also Chair of the Scientific Program Committee for this year's meeting.

The learning opportunities at Internal Medicine Meeting 2025 will begin April 1 in New Orleans. As usual, one- and two-day precourses will be offered before the meeting on topics ranging from critical care, diabetes, and geriatrics to point-of-care ultrasound and leadership in quality improvement.

A new precourse joins the assortment this year. “Advancing Nutrition in Medical Practice” will take place on Tuesday, April 1, and is designed to provide internal medicine physicians with evidence-based practical knowledge and skills to integrate nutrition into their practice.

The full meeting kicks off on Thursday, April 3. The Opening Ceremony on Thursday morning at 9:15 a.m. will feature Reed V. Tuckson, MD, FACP, talking about health care misinformation, disinformation, and distrust, as well as strategies for mitigating those issues.

Several additional meeting sessions will focus on topics relevant to current events. The C. Wesley Eisele Lecture for this year is titled “The Implications of AI in Internal Medicine,” and at least two other talks will address artificial intelligence. The Dr. Ananda Prasad Lecture in Physiology will touch on another topic of growing significance in American society: the pathophysiology of dementia.

Traditional favorites, including Clinical Skills Workshops, Clinical Pearls, Multiple Small Feedings of the Mind, and updates in numerous subspecialties, return again to the meeting this year.

“I always love the update sessions,” said Dr. Dow. “There's so much happening with cardiovascular disease and diabetes and obesity that hearing the latest updates about those medications for those diseases is something I'm looking forward to. I also enjoy going to the sessions that help us think about the underlying science and ongoing advances.”

He'll have a lot of choices in that area, with more than 200 clinical and practice-related sessions presented by expert faculty from across the country and around the world for in-person attendees. A virtual registration option is available, and approximately 100 sessions will be shared via live- stream. All registered attendees have access to livestreamed sessions and can participate in polling and Q&A with the presenters via the Internal Medicine Meeting 2025 mobile app or virtual platform.

Of course, only in-person attendees will get to “hear the music and eat the food and just be part of the culture” in New Orleans, as Dr. Dow put it. “New Orleans is one of the great American cities for tourists to come and visit, and April is the perfect time.”

Before or after exploring the city, attendees should consider coming inside for the session he'll be moderating at the end of the meeting on Saturday, “Internal Medicine Meeting 2025 Highlights: Key Messages You'll Want to Take Home.”

“That's always a fun way to wrap up the meeting, to hear from three panelists who tell you about what they got from the meeting and the things that they learned,” said Dr. Dow. The highlights session leads right into the finals of Doctor's Dilemma so “should be full of lots of great energy,” he noted.

That energy is a big reason physicians come to this meeting year after year, according to Dr. Dow.

“One of the underlying themes of the meeting is always how much internal medicine matters in the lives of people. It's great to go to a meeting where you're surrounded by thousands of other people that believe in caring for patients and being compassionate and advancing the health of their communities,” he said. “It's harder when you're by yourself practicing to recognize that there's a lot of people that are doing very similar good work around the world.”