Even amid upheaval in health care and research funding, the academic medicine community must continue to stand up for medicine’s core values and mission, Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, told several thousand attendees at Learn Serve Lead 2025: The AAMC Annual Meeting, on Sunday, Nov. 2.
“Whether it’s the right time to stand up versus just to keep your head down and let the storm pass is a question that I know that every institution has had to grapple with in recent months,” Murphy said during the opening plenary session entitled Leading Question: Leadership in Uncertain Times. “But when we don't stand up for what we believe in, for our core principles, we lose something very important.”
In a discussion facilitated by AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, Murthy reminded attendees that today’s doctors descend from a long line of healers who have dealt with great challenges over the arc of time, from plagues to pandemics, when good medical care was not always available. They did not give up and neither should today’s academic medicine community.
“We came to this to reduce human suffering because we want to bring more light into the world,” said Murthy. “And we wanted to help the next generation of students and trainees do the same. It is the bedrock and anchor that will help guide us in what we should and should not do as we think about how to respond in this moment.”
Murthy recalled the crisis of lead in the water supply of Flint, Michigan, which emerged in his first term as surgeon general. He decided to address the crisis head-on and flew to the city to engage in town halls and even make house calls. The response he received was heated but worthwhile, he said.
“Showing up is so important. We cannot say we will only show up when we have the right diagnosis or right therapeutic to offer,” he said. “We have to sit with our patients in their uncertainty. There is healing to be found in human presence.”
He urged physicians, faculty members, and trainees to re-establish broken trust by interacting not only with legislators, but on a grassroots basis, by initiating town halls in schools and houses of worship to combat misinformation and address issues of concern, from vaccine hesitancy to the rising cost of health insurance premiums.
Students can be taught to show up as well. “I want students to experience that from their earliest times [in medical school], because if they can help build a communications pathway that stands alongside the clinical work they do, that will actually make them better clinicians,” Murthy said.
“This is a moment for us to use crisis and turn it into opportunity — opportunity to remake ourselves into what the country and the world need, because that is one way that we also help to rebuild trust,” he said. “When people see us responding to the deeper sources of pain in their lives, even if we don’t always have a solution for them, they feel like we get them, we care about them, we understand.”
Several weeks ago, AAMCNews spoke with Murthy about the challenges facing leaders in academic medicine today and how to stay grounded in human connection in spite of them.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How can those who work in academic medicine stay grounded in empathy, vulnerability, and resilience during uncertain times? Why is this so important right now?
This is a time of extraordinary stress, chaos, and change, particularly in academic medicine for people working to deliver health care, teach students, and conduct research. They have witnessed a painful series of threats to universities, research funding, and scientific integrity in our federal health agencies.
There are also broader forces impacting health for the country and the world, including technology and artificial intelligence (AI), that are rapidly shaping how health care is designed and delivered. While there are tremendous benefits that can come from technology, it can also have a dehumanizing effect and push us further apart from each other if it is not designed and used appropriately. Even though technology connects us in certain ways, it too often makes authentic human connection more distant and contributes to our loneliness and isolation.
And so, I think there are a lot of forces pulling us apart and increasing anxiety and uncertainty in our lives. In moments like this, it is so important for us to be more deeply connected to each other and try to understand each other’s experiences. This is where empathy comes in. During times of stress, too often we tend to pull back, but what we need to do is reach out to others, to share what we’re going through, to listen and hear what they’re going through, and to find a way to forge ahead together.
You’ve spoken and written a lot about the dangers of loneliness. Now that we are a few years past the acute level of the pandemic, how do you think our society is doing at reconnecting? What worries you, and is there anything that gives you hope in this area?
In some ways, we are much better off now in terms of our isolation than during the depths of the pandemic. I think we have a greater appreciation for seeing strangers in a coffee shop, seeing neighbors walking down the street, or being able to get together at a friend’s birthday party in person. These are things that many of us weren’t able to do in that first year of the pandemic, and we are less likely to take these simple moments of connection for granted.
With that said, I don’t think we are fully back to where we were prior to the pandemic. I don’t think we have grappled with what the invisible impacts of the pandemic were on all of us, especially on our mental and social health. I see the impact, particularly, with young people who experienced the isolation of COVID-19 at a sensitive period in terms of their social development. When I talk to students across the country, many of them say they still don’t feel like they’re as comfortable with social interaction as they were prior to the pandemic. Many college students tell me they noticed that coming out of the pandemic, their peers were far more glued to their devices than prior to COVID-19.
We were struggling with loneliness long before the pandemic, and while COVID-19 made it worse, it also gave us an opportunity to talk more openly about loneliness and isolation. People are more acutely aware of the loneliness in their life in ways they perhaps weren’t pre-pandemic, but we have yet to figure out how to build the connections that will ultimately sustain all of us.
For those who are in leadership roles, there can be a lot of expectations. How does leading through tumultuous times take a toll on an individual?
As a leader, you’re taking responsibility for other people. You’re committing to support and guide them through good times and bad times. Being responsible for other people can be a joy, a privilege, and an honor. It can also be very stressful. Particularly when you are not sure how to navigate the rapidly changing environment we’re in and especially when you yourself are struggling. But what makes stress much more harmful is when we have to manage it entirely on our own — when we can’t speak openly about the challenges we face and when we don’t feel like we have people with whom to face those challenges.
Unfortunately, that’s how many leaders feel today. It was striking to me that leaders of nonprofit organizations in health care, CEOs of companies, and members of Congress were some of the loneliest people I met during my travels. In hushed tones, when no one else was around, they would tell me about how lonely it was to be a leader. We have this image — this stereotype — of a leader as somebody who should know all the answers and should be able to manage every situation on their own without showing an ounce of stress or doubt. And the truth is, that’s just not reality. That’s not how human beings are built. And when we try to hold ourselves to that standard, it causes even more stress and pain.
But when we can be real with the people we’re working with about the fact that we don’t always know all the answers, and that we need help sometimes, that doesn’t make people think you’re a weak leader. Instead, it helps people trust you more, because you’re being authentic and real. This helps them relate to you and to feel invited to step up and work with you to meet the challenges your organization faces. This is good for individuals and good for organizations.
What is your message to all who work in academic medicine — the researchers, the faculty, the medical students, the residents — about how to find the motivation to keep going through uncertain times?
To my colleagues in academic medicine: I want you to know that your mission and your work are more important than ever before. I know these have become immeasurably harder and there are many obstacles that stand in the way of you carrying out your mission. But it is no less essential and honorable. I say this because sometimes, when you feel that your work is being threatened or pushed to the side, it can often make you feel devalued and make your mission feel like it’s less important. But the work of delivering clinical care, training the next generation of clinicians and scientists, and pursuing research and inquiry — this is the foundation on which medicine is built. This is the lineage of work that for generations has improved health and sustained societies. Your work truly matters.
To get through these challenging times, we will need each other. We will need to invest in our relationships with each other. That’s what will sustain us. Stress and hardship are much easier to navigate when we have people we can lean on — and we all need people to lean on. Our relationships are also the foundation for our advocacy. When we are connected to one another, we are much more able to come together, to organize, and to make sure that our voices are heard by decision-makers who shape laws and policies at a local, state, or federal level.
It’s also important for the public to know that there are people in academic medicine who are so deeply committed to strengthening humanity, whatever obstacles may come. We have a sacred cause: to care for those who are sick and to reduce suffering. In times of hardship and ease, this will always be our guiding light.
