Brendan Ross is a second-year resident in psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital. He received his MDCM from McGill in 2023. During medical school and residency, he has presented at multiple AOS annual meetings. He is interested in public mental health, transcultural psychiatry, and multidisciplinary research collaborations that span cultures and languages (US/Canada, Taiwan, and China).
Reflections on the 2024 AOS Annual Meeting in Kansas City
This year in Kansas City was my third year attending an AOS annual meeting, either virtually or in person. As I sat through another great weekend of talks and discussions with other Oslerians, something clicked for me this time that had eluded me before. I have always been in awe of how the AOS brings young scholars together with their more senior, experienced counterparts, but this time, I understood just how much we have to learn from our peers who trained in an earlier generation. I was impressed by their patience, their generous way of listening, their clear-eyed focus on justice, and their openness to change and evolve. I realized that some of the strongest voices advocating for social justice and for inclusion at the meeting came from those doctors who had been raised in an earlier era. The diversity of the younger speakers spoke to the strides that have been made in recent years to turn words into action. And more importantly, the conversations at AOS were held in a space that treasures mutual respect. It reminded me that, ultimately, regardless of our age or rank, we are all students to the end, doing our small bit to repair the world.