For today’s column, I want to give you a sneak peek of the talk I’ll be giving on Sunday at the Leadership Plenary of the Association of American Medical College’s annual conference, Learn Serve Lead, held this year in Seattle. This event will mark the end of my year as chair of the AAMC Board of Directors, and it is customary that the outgoing chair speaks at one of the plenary sessions. The AAMC is a large group of committed institutions full of thoughtful and driven professionals, and I’ve been proud to serve as board chair and represent my home state.
My speech begins on the topic of paradoxes - how good and bad, positive and negative, life-changing and insignificant, can all be happening at the same time, in the same place. Across our state’s history, these opposites – two sides of a coin – have converged many times, even right here at UMMC. But we never have let anything divert us from moving forward and serving Mississippi to our utmost ability. I believe other institutions have something they can learn from our determination to fulfil our mission.
For instance, I’ll share that while Dr. James Hardy was making history performing the first transplant of a lung into a human, tragedy was presenting itself to UMMC’s doors as civil rights leader Medgar Evers was being wheeled into our hospital and would die later that night from a gunshot wound. In that moment, at that place, was evidence of the best of us … and the worst of us.
I will recall for the audience an experience I had several years ago while seeing patients in the emergency department that on face was innocuous but left an indelible impression on me. I previously shared this story with you in my March 24, 2023 VC Notes entitled Any Given Day. This story is an excellent way to show the conference attendees representing hundreds of academic medicine institutions the types of things we face here, Every. Single. Day.
And I’ll speak about my belief that no matter what side of the coin turns up – good or bad – academic medicine will be and has to be ready. We saw this play out in the early days of the COVID pandemic and then for the next two years as institutions like ours were relied upon to treat the sick AND find ways to keep people safe.
To close my presentation, I’ll challenge the audience, made up of administrators, clinical leaders, change agents and passionate students, to be thoughtful on how they respond to negativity or turmoil. We can’t let circumstances, whether they are connected to us directly or just reports in the constantly changing news cycle, impact us in a way that causes us to lose focus. We can’t let anything divert us from what makes academic medicine so vital and is OUR WHY – research, education and training and caring for the patients, some of whom are the sickest of the sick. If we keep the main things the main things, we will be successful in our goal of building A Healthier Mississippi.
My speech begins on the topic of paradoxes - how good and bad, positive and negative, life-changing and insignificant, can all be happening at the same time, in the same place. Across our state’s history, these opposites – two sides of a coin – have converged many times, even right here at UMMC. But we never have let anything divert us from moving forward and serving Mississippi to our utmost ability. I believe other institutions have something they can learn from our determination to fulfil our mission.