Helen L. Bernie, DO, MPH, recaps the 2024 SMSNA Fall Scientific Meeting

In this video, Helen L. Bernie, DO, MPH, recaps highlights from the 2024 Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA) Fall Scientific Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. Bernie is the director of male sexual and reproductive medicine and the andrology fellowship director at Indiana University in Indianapolis and was also the scientific chair for the 2024 SMSNA Fall Scientific Meeting.

Transcription:

We started off with the welcome ceremony, which was a wonderful big hit, and we had a lot of international societies this year. We had the European Society of Sexual Medicine, the International Society of Sexual Medicine, the Middle Eastern Society of Sexual Medicine, as well as the Spanish Language Sexual Medicine Society. This was so exciting to have the international presence and everyone coming together to network, collaborate, and learn. We also had our very first ever Spanish language abstract session, which we're going to expand upon next year, which I'm really looking forward to. At the beginning of the session on Thursday morning, we had several instructional courses that attendees could come and learn really hands-on in here. One was an androgens course, another was a regenerative therapies course. We had an onco sexology course. We had our Fellowship to Practice course, which is always so much fun that I do each year with my colleague Matt Ziegelmann, just to help with job search and things that are really important to newly graduated residents or fellows and several others. We had the basic science as well as the female sexual dysfunction courses, so really wonderful opportunities.

And then we started on Friday morning, we started this session off with a wonderful medical plenary where we talked about mindfulness and really creating that career that brings you joy and happiness and helps you align your priorities with what gives you purpose in life and what feels so important. And that was done by our colleague Dr. Phil Pierorazio. We also had Dr. Stacy Loeb come, and she talked to us about the importance of nutrition and how that impacts sexual health because it has such a significant impact. Dr. Mohit Khera talked about our sexspan and how we can do things to improve our healthspan that translate to our sexspan and the 4 pillars, which are so important that no pill can replace, which is exercise, which is diet, which is sleep and stress modification. So it was just filled with so many wonderful speakers. It was a really engaging and really charged session that I think was really wonderful opportunity.

We then went into a bunch of abstract sessions, and then we also had our APP course that we do each year, which is really great because it brings not only all of the APP, but they get to really get hands-on training and specifically in sexual medicine because the SMSNA offers several courses that allow them to get a specific certification that they can bring to a job search or bring to their boss that really shows that they've gotten additional training and hands-on experience in sexual health and reproductive medicine. This year, we also had additional courses on BPH or benign prosthetic hypertrophy and management options that include ones that can minimize sexual side effects. We also had an extra session on fertility. We're really bringing in that reproductive health because there's so much overlap with sexual health as well as reproductive health.

And then we also had one of my all-time favorites too, the Life and Business of Medicine. That was where I really sought to have a lot of leaders in our field, like Dr. Phil Pierorazio, Dr. Kyle Richards, so many others, great people to come and talk about the human part of medicine. We all do this because we love patients and sometimes, work and life and stressors get in the way and we forget how can we recharge ourselves and how can we return ourselves back to that place where again, we're meeting our purpose, we feel recharged, and we're in that pursuit of happiness and where we can really just be our best without being so drained by everything else.

We actually had a really fun session that I go to do with my husband, who's also a urologist, called the How to Navigate Dual Physicians. It was with myself and my husband and several other of my male colleagues who are also married to female physicians. And we got to really navigate and talk about how you make it work because there's so much give and take and the importance of building a village to help you, and that sometimes, it doesn't look pretty. Sometimes, the house isn't always clean. Sometimes, you have to bring a sick kid to work with you and making sure that you let that other partner know that their job is just as important as your job. We did all of these things. We also had our finale, which is the 25 Years of Sexual Medicine, which was one of my favorites because this is the 25th Annual Sexual Medicine Society of North America [Fall Scientific Meeting]. We had all of the leading experts talking about where we've been and where we're going from 25 years, from erectile dysfunction, from regenerative therapies to female sexual dysfunction and really moving on up.

Then we closed out this session with the Golden Nut Awards, which is where we go over all of our abstract awards for all the wonderful residents and attendees who submitted wonderful abstracts. They get their awards, and then we had our craziest cases that were presented, and the winner took home the gold for the Golden Nut Trophy and bragging rights for the next year. I cannot wait to see what the SMSNA is going to have in store next year for our 26th annual SMSNA conference, which is going to be in Texas.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.