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Committee Spotlight: Specialty Medicine Awareness

Feb 17, 2025, 00:00 AM by The ACVIM
Baye Williamson, DVM, DACVIM (Neurology) | Chair, Specialty Medicine Awareness Committee

Dr. Baye Williamson graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in 2012. After bouncing around between Missouri and New York for a couple years of internships, she completed her residency at Cornell University. Currently, Dr. Williamson works at the Veterinary Emergency + Referral Center of Hawaii and is the only neurologist in the state.

What motivated you to volunteer with the ACVIM, or how did you first get involved with the organization?

I originally volunteered with the scientific editorial board and assisted with writing and editing information for VetSpecialists.com. Following that, I was asked to join the Specialty Medicine Awareness Committee (SMAC) of which I am currently the chair.

Could you describe the work of the committee and how this work contributes to the overall mission/goals of the ACVIM?

We want to promote awareness and value of veterinary specialists and enhance collaboration between veterinary specialists, referral partners, and pet owners. By creating and providing content for VetSpecialists.com as well as the Beyond the Clinic Podcast and Triad of Care Insider, we aim to connect with a large population of pet owners and general practitioners and highlight real-life cases where referral and collaboration with specialists enhanced patient care and potentially saved lives. We hope that this will encourage new referrals and that owners may start to request referrals for the pets if it is not offered. 

Can you share a successful collaboration story that highlights the positive impact of teamwork within your committee?
I think adding one a general practitioner to the committee has been a great collaboration. Given that our goals are to focus on awareness and collaboration with referral partners, having a general practitioner's perspective has been invaluable to the discussion. There have been times where their perception of something we are debating has been opposite of ours (the specialists) and so having to address things from a completely different angle has help enhance our committee.

How has your involvement with the ACVIM and chairing this committee personally enriched your professional experience and contributed to your growth in the field of veterinary internal medicine?
Focusing on the best ways to achieve awareness of specialty medicine is personally very appropriate for me. In Hawaii, we have a growing specialist community, but many of our general practitioners are not used to or aware of the benefits of working with specialists. The work we do in this committee is directly applicable to my day-to-day professional experience.

What advice would you give to other Diplomates considering volunteering with the ACVIM?
Volunteering is very easy and really doesn’t take up a lot of your time. It also helps give you a new appreciation for how the ACVIM functions.

Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the committee and its impact within ACVIM? Are there any upcoming projects or goals that you are particularly excited about?

I am very excited for our current project: we are conducting a large survey of pet owners and then referral partners to better understand perceptions of specialty medicine. As specialists, I think we all feel that our care enhances patient well-being and outcomes, but we are attempting to objectively prove that. We are hoping to define the value of specialty medicine and publish this research in an academic journal. I hope that this research will not only prove what we hope it will, but that it will allow us to develop new and better ways to collaborate with our referral partners and pet owners to enhance our patients’ care.

Interested in volunteering with the ACVIM? Learn more here

View a list of current ACVIM committees here

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