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Joel M. Topf, MD FACP

29 Dec 20, 6 tweets, 2 min read

Last year for the first time the NSMC required a letter of recommendation. This resulted in a serious disagreement among the faculty as some view letters of rec as standard application steps and require applicants to commit to the process by asking mentors for a letter

Other members of the faculty felt that letters of rec, in addition to having low predictive validity were tools that formalized inherent bias.

See: jamesgmartin.center/2019/07/its-ti… for a review of the lack validity of LoR

The solution last year was a compromise. We required a letter of rec but allowed applicants to opt out via a loop hole where the applicant just describes their reasoning for not submitting a letter of rec.

This policy is being carried over for the current year, and we got one application with this description of their letter of rec. And I just love it...

Moral of the story, don't let the letter of rec intimidate you out of applying to the NSMC social media internship, get your program director, section chief, Sunday school teacher, or mother to write it for you.

nsmc.blog/application-20…

Get to work. Applications are due next Sunday, January 3.

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Joel M. Topf, MD FACP

@kidney_boy

28 Dec 20

So there is about a week left to apply to the Nephrology Social Media Collective Internship. One of the advantages we describe is the ability to become part of the leadership in nephrology. Let me show you what that looks like

nsmc.blog/application-20…

Kidney Medicine is the newest journal from the National Kidney Foundation. Take a look at the masthead and see three of our graduates running social media for them

Go to CJASN and find more of our graduates*

*Actually Joel and Edgar were never NSMC interns

Read 8 tweets

Joel M. Topf, MD FACP

@kidney_boy

9 Dec 20

Let's talk about the evidence behind the use of visual abstracts to communicate SCIENCE!!

@AndrewMIbrahim

This field started with @AndrewMIbrahim, the whizz kid from @UMich. He was a surgical resident exploring ways to communicate scientific manuscripts and came up with the visual abstract

opmed.doximity.com/articles/visua…

H/T @TDAungst

@Atul_Gawande

He realized that these would be a great way to communicate information on social media and started creating visual abstracts as part of his gig as creative director at Annals of Surgery (what do you mean your journal doesn't have a creative director?) @Atul_Gawande agreed

Read 13 tweets

Joel M. Topf, MD FACP

@kidney_boy

29 Oct 20

It's time to vote for the nephrology study of the year in the #NephJCkidneys. I think a lot of people are going to vote for DAPA-CKD and there is no doubt that it is an important study, but...

DAPA-CKD is largely just a replication study of CREDENCE, last year's winner. I'd like to make the case for ISCHEMIA-CKD

NephJC summary: nephjc.com/news/ischemiac…
NEJM: nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Think of how common this clinical scenario is:

A dialysis patient misses a dialysis session and comes to the hospital with shortness of breath. The ER orders a troponin. The troponin is elevated but is stable over three draws.

Read 7 tweets

Joel M. Topf, MD FACP

@kidney_boy

27 Oct 20

I have a patient with anti-PLA2r + membranous nephropathy who was taking a lot of NSAIDs before the onset of disease. Does the anti-PLA2r antibodies exonerate the NSAIDs? #AskRenal

It is an incredibly interesting case. The patient, who was born in east Asia, presented to me years ago with a history of HIV (treated with tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) with a mild increase in cr. U/A showed heavy proteinuria.

Patient was not concerned with the increased proteinuria but the lower extremity edema. We treated with furosemide and did a biopsy. The biopsy was inadequate with only 2 gloms🤯
both sclerosed 🤯🤯🤯

Read 6 tweets