The discussion groups that met immediately after Dr Federman's address, "The General Internist as a Faculty Member," were designed to explore this same topic and to report to the entire assembly on the results of their deliberations. In many ways, the comprehensiveness of Dr Federman's speech appeared to temporarily foreclose certain potential discussion topics even while leaving other topics open for intense, and at times, heated discussion and analysis.
But while Dr Federman's speech was inspirational, in the intimacy of the discussion group settings, hard reality intruded, and the tone of the discussion reports was more somber and questioning. In contrast to the optimistic and encouraging tone of Dr Federman's speech, the discussion reports tended to be uncertain and even pessimistic at times and seemed constantly to be addressing the quint-essential question: Can general internal medicine really survive in the academic marketplace? The question was asked in many ways and