Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, FASCO: My name is Dr. Debra Patt, and I serve as an executive vice president of Texas Oncology, and I'm on the board of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). I'm very excited about this year's ASCO Annual Meeting.
Oncology News Central (ONC): What advice would you have for those attending their first ASCO meeting?
Dr. Patt: Well, the ASCO Annual Meeting is something you definitely want to prepare for. We'll all meet in Chicago in the first week in June, and it's likely that there will be over 40,000 participants at the meeting. Attendance is robust, and it's important to really look ahead and plan the meeting so you can make the most of your time.
If it's your first, or one of your early, ASCO meetings, it's likely that it can be a little bit overwhelming. I encourage people who are going to the meeting for the first time to really spend some time on the ASCO website at conferences.asco.org/am/attend where you can go and look at sessions and plan your time. There are some things that are newsworthy at the Annual Meeting that you're not going to want to miss. When you search ASCO Sessions at a Glance or look at a virtual grid of the ASCO program, it allows you to really think about what things you're interested in.
Because remember, at any moment in time during the ASCO meeting, there's probably five or six things that you could be interested in that would be a good use of your time. And most people have a lot of meetings outside of the [Annual] Meeting. You could have an early breakfast, as early as 6 a.m. Usually, the meeting gets started about 7:30 a.m. You can have things that go on into the evening. So it's good to have a strategic approach so that you can make sure that you get everything that you want out of the meeting.
I think of that as really the big-ticket items that I want to see and want to be sure that I see presented. And then also the relationships that I want to nurture and the little meetings that I want to have while I'm there. Remember that if you don't have access to the content because you have something else planned during the time of a session that you wanted to see, that usually there's a way for you to see some things at a later date.
ONC: What are some of those big-ticket items that you recommend?
Dr. Patt: What are some things that are big-ticket items that you want to be sure to see? Well, I think the plenary session is really important. This usually features practice-changing, clinically-relevant abstracts. Those are really the very newsworthy abstracts that will be on the cover of the newspaper, top-of-the-fold, during the meeting sessions. The plenary sessions are always very good. I think the opening session is always really important, to hear the presidential address, the Karnofsky Award, and other awards. Those are always really meaningful and very agenda-setting for how ASCO is thinking about serving the greater oncology community for the year. So those are things I wouldn't miss. There are also some in-person workshops, Genomics 101 for Oncologists and Navigating Communication With Seriously Ill Patients. Those in-person workshops do require pre-registration, so you have to think about it ahead of time and plan for it ahead of time. If you plan on attending those.
In the plenary series, there are some rapid abstract updates that you can see. Then there are "State-of-the-Art" education sessions in each track. In addition, there are poster sessions that you're going to be interested in walking through. I think those are the prepared things that you can look at the grid and plan for ahead of time.
In addition, any small group that you belong to will likely have meetings at ASCO. It's a great place to meet with manufacturers, if you have clinical trials that you're collaborating on. It's a great place to meet colleagues. You just have to pick a location to do that.
There are some specific events for women. ASCO's philanthropic arm is the Conquer Cancer Foundation, and there is a group just for women, the Women Who Conquer Cancer, and we're having an event on Saturday afternoon that talks about young investigator awards and early career development awards, which are investments in research for young investigators. I think this is a really important time to invest in research and grant awards to young women professionals because, for many of us who are in careers in oncology, it's a critical time when we're making life decisions about our lives and our family. Those investments really pay off tremendously, with the fruits of that labor being research and advancement of cancer care. So those are nice activities to participate in.
And for fellows, there's a really nice fellows lounge where you can sit and meet other fellows, and they have some educational discussions for fellows about career development. Those are some nice places to go to meet people who are like you. Most places like training programs and other collaborative organizations will have little meetings outside of the meeting where you can go and meet. And then you can't visit Chicago without trying to get some good reservations and some fine dining, because Chicago has some of the best dining in the country.
ONC: What other tips do you have?
Dr. Patt: A lot of people will be giving talks on how to choose your career path or mentorship, opportunities that you can even sign up for. Those can be incredibly helpful, if you just want to talk to other people as you're trying to find your path. And whether you choose to go into community practice or an academic practice or have a research-focused path or go into industry, it can be incredibly helpful to talk with other people.
And then even just sitting down and having a cup of coffee with people who you've been interested in talking with, who you're interested in their research in this space, ASCO is a great place to do that, to connect with people that you otherwise wouldn't be co-located with. And that takes some pre-planning, usually in the weeks before the conference that people will reach out to make appointments in between different sessions to try to make sure that you get time with the people that you would like to get time with. That actually, at this point in my career, is the majority of the time that I spend [at the meeting], catching up with people that I'd like to catch up with at the meeting.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
