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AAMC Reporter: July 2006
A Word from the President:
"The Person We Aspire to Be"
In his final annual meeting address, The Work Ahead, Jordan Cohen described how "the physician professional is defined not only by what he or she must know and do, but most importantly by a profound sense of what the physician must be." No one captured this ideal
better in words than Jordan, and as I attended this spring's council meetings and listened to the heartfelt respect and gratitude expressed for his leadership, it struck me that no one else but Jordan captured this ideal better, in practice as well. Jordan is the physician professional—the person we aspire to be.
Jordan had a singular ability to cut through the distractions of our daily routine, to help us rise "above the fray," as he once put it, and bring us back to the person we aspire to be. This unique talent of Jordan's became especially clear during a tribute by Richard Krugman, AAMC Executive Council chair-elect, who honored Jordan at the April Council of Deans meeting by using excerpts from each of his 12 annual meeting addresses. It was through these quotes and addresses that we were all reminded why we came to academic medicine originally and why we valued Jordan's leadership so highly.
As I begin my presidency, I'd like to build upon Dick's tribute by using Jordan's own words to reflect upon
his many accomplishments in each of our three
mission areas.
In medical education, Jordan urged us to find the joys
in teaching and mentorship and make certain we never became complacent about our fundamental task as medical educators. "How might we do more, do even better with what we have at our disposal?" he asked in his first annual meeting address. It was this sense of forward momentum, coupled with his strong belief that we do everything possible "by conspicuous, conscientious role modeling" to strengthen the moral fiber of students, that led early in his presidency to the Medical School Objectives Project (a blueprint that defined the skills, knowledge, and attributes required of 21st-century physicians) and, later on, to reform efforts such as the groundbreaking report Educating Doctors to Provide High Quality Medical Care and the Institute
for Improving Medical Education.
It also was Jordan's long-standing desire that we develop a "medical profession that looks more like America" by "increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the medical school classroom" that led to such efforts as the Health Professions Pipeline Initiative, the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program, and the new Closing the Gap marketing and outreach campaign. And it was Jordan's resolve that we never let residents be anything other than students first — that we take care "not to overburden residents with non-educational requirements" — that gave us the new Compact Between Resident Physicians and Their Teachers, a landmark document definitively "honoring the 'E' in GME."
In clinical care, Jordan pointed out the fatally flawed structures in our health care system, urging us to build a new one.
"Our health care system isn't broken," he told us. "It is an outmoded, archaic legacy system that must be replaced." Academic medicine was uniquely suited
to the task of health care reform, but collaboration, he emphasized, would be key.
"Our best hope, in my opinion, is for academic medical centers to take the lead
in establishing integrated and accountable models."
Step 1, and the subject of an entire annual meeting address, was developing "A New Model for a New Century," an interdependent model of collaborative care in which success would be measured not only by "the summary of the accomplishments of individual institutions, but the aggregate achievement of goals attainable only by deliberate, collaborative efforts involving the entire academic community."
As a result, numerous multi- and inter-disciplinary
collaborative efforts are underway at the AAMC, a prime example being the Academic Chronic Care Collaborative within the Institute for Improving Clinical Care, where 48 teams from 22 participating institutions are working to create better care as well as educational models for individuals with asthma, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.
In our third mission area, medical research, Jordan
was a strong advocate of research integrity. At stake,
he told us, was nothing less than the public trust, that "silver lining in our white coats." The responsible
conduct of research, he once explained, requires that institutions remain mindful of the need to uphold the highest standards of research integrity, even in the most routine functions of basic and clinical investigation. Toward that end, he helped forge a cooperative agreement with the Office of Research Integrity, which has provided over $800,000 to academic societies to advance research integrity. He also guided AAMC's sponsorship of the Association for the Accreditation
of Human Research Protection Programs.
And, he reminded us, when it comes to trust, perception is vital. "Whether or not external financial interests have resulted in an actual degrading of sound scientific practices…or actually caused some slippage in the public's confidence of what we do," he said, "we risk great peril if we fail to respond to the growing perception that financial conflicts of interest have gotten out of control." Today, because of Jordan, academic medicine has responded loudly and clearly through guidelines for strengthening institutional and individual financial conflict-of-interest standards in clinical research, as well as principles for protecting integrity in the conduct and reporting of clinical trials.
Above all, Jordan's leadership in each of our mission areas reawakened our shared commitment to professionalism. In fact, professionalism was a key theme underlying each of his addresses. Often conveyed through the metaphor of travel, of following a "right"
or "principled path," professionalism, for Jordan, was a journey toward a "cherished destination."
As the person we aspire to be, Jordan was our moral compass on this journey. It is a legacy I am both humbled and honored to inherit as AAMC president, and I look forward to traveling this principled path as we build a future of which all of us, including Jordan, can be proud.
Darrell G. Kirch, M.D.
AAMC President
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