AAEM NEWS PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Leadership in a Time of Crisis Lisa A. Moreno, MD MS MSCR FAAEM FIFEM
One of the many wonderful opportunities I have had in the past couple of years has been acceptance into the prestigious Chair’s Development Program (CDP) sponsored by the Association of Academic Chairs in Emergency Medicine in collaboration with the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. At our most recent virtual meeting, Dr. Susan Stern, one of the course leaders, spoke on Leadership during Times of Crisis. I learned a lot, but I also realized that the Academy and our members are providing exemplary leadership during the current COVID pandemic and this time of political crisis. Here is some of what I learned: Be present and visible. Leaders need to be seen and heard. During the early days of the COVID crisis, the Board was called to many ad hoc meetings to deal with issues that our members brought to our attention. Members reported that their employment was terminated or threatened with termination when they brought attention to the fact that they had inadequate PPE. Members did, in fact, have inadequate PPE and were genuinely concerned about their health and safety and that of their families. Members were told that they would be asked to ration resources and to send patients home who they would have admitted prior to the pandemic. They were concerned about possible malpractice litigation in these circumstances. The Board not only read their emails, we called each member who had contacted us. We created position statements, collaborated with other EM organizations to take a stand, wrote to legislators in all 50 states and the federal government, and convened task forces under the able leadership of Drs. Walker, Wood, Walters, Pickens, and Mulligan to organize our ongoing response. We were out there: present and visible.
The Board not only read their emails, we called each member who had contacted us.”
Work alongside your team. The AAEM Board are all board certified working emergency physicians. What you do, we do. The problems you are experiencing, we are experiencing. This is critical to informed leadership. How can your elected representatives represent you if we don’t know what your workday life is like? Everyone in the Academy’s leadership is out there getting their hands dirty and doing the work of emergency medicine. Listen to all voices. Often, this is the hardest part of leadership. AAEM is strongly opposed to the corporate practice of medicine. We don’t budge on this. But when Academy members are concerned about pay and hours cuts, we do need to listen to the rationale that the corporations have for making these cuts. We found that democratic groups were also dealing with decreased volumes, and university employees were looking at hours cuts. We listened, and we had to accept that decreased revenues would need to be absorbed by the physician group. While physicians understandably don’t want a cut in pay or hours, democratic groups dealt with this by listening to all voices as well, and they reached consensus on how to cope. By listening to all voices, we realized that the principles on which the Academy stands hold true: Emergency docs will own a solution they come to democratically and solutions should not be dictated by administrators.
We became present and visible, and we accepted the criticism that being visible often begets because no patient should be denied health care because of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, insurance status, citizenship, disability, or any human condition.” Another voice we are listening to is that of the residents and students. There is a lot of anxiety out there this year, as students entering the match will not have the opportunity to do any away rotations in EM. This is of more concern to those students whose medical schools do not have an EM residency, and this is true of every HBCU medical school. AAEM has responded by working with our AAEM/RSA leaders, Dr. Haig Aintablian and Dr. Dany Accillien in collaboration with SAEM RAMS to offer the HOME AWAY FROM HOME webinar program for these students to meet and be mentored by program directors from around the country. Our Academic Affairs Committee leaders, Drs. Josh Joseph and Leslie Bilello, will be front and center on this program, along with Drs. Mark Reiter, Mike Dalley, Marianne Haughey, Tiffany Murano, Edgar Ordonez, and many others.
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COMMON SENSE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
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