Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  With 2 kids in daycare, that means one thing.  HAND TURKEYS!

Daycares LOVE making artwork using kids hands and feet.  Hearts made of footprints for Valentines Day and Christmas Trees made of handprints are cute.  But Thanksgiving is the holiday where hand artwork is King!

Seeing all the little handprints on display reminded me of a new “branding” campaign in Geriatrics–the 5Ms.

It is an attempt to explain what geriatricians do in a simple and easy to remember way.  The words in the campaign are well thought out/on point.  However, what makes me chuckle is that the published visual representation is a hand turkey template?!?

Descriptors of the different Ms can be found in the table below (lifted from this website).

I was unaware of this attempt at rebranding until a recent meeting where it was discussed like it was old news.  Whoops!  Bad on me for not paying attention.

It may be captured somewhere under multi-complexity, but I think we are also experts at multi-locations of care. Hospital, clinic, home visits, nursing homes, PACE programs, hospital in home, etc. But then that would be a six-fingered turkey, and we didn’t kill Inego Montoya’s father…in fact we are all about NOT killing people’s fathers!

Despite my somewhat joking tone, I do really like the 5Ms, and I need to find a way to incorporate them into my teaching.  They really do capture the essence of what we do as a specialty (and why we are different from internists and family med docs who also “see older adults”).

And hopefully, someone somewhere will be thankful for a geriatrician this Thanksgiving!