CONNECTION IS CRITICAL

Dear friends and colleagues,

First off, Happy New Year to you all. I am excited and humbled beyond words to be writing to you as the new President of your medical society. I find that milestones like birthdays, holidays, and the starting of a new year not only give us a way to mark the passage of time, but also a much-needed moment to pause and reflect.

Earlier in January, our family celebrated another major milestone with the birth of our second daughter. As many parents know, even amidst the hazy exhaustion of 2am feedings, there are inexplicable moments of wonder, joy, and, most importantly, hope. You want nothing but the best for this tiny human, and you daringly hope that you (and the rest of the world) will be able to deliver on that promise.

Less than two weeks after our daughter’s birth, however, the headlines were once again filled with news of our uniquely American problem, multiple mass shootings, this time here in California, targeting members of the Asian community during Lunar New Year no less. I, like many of you, felt saddened, angry, and maybe even a little hopeless that we may never solve the problem of too many guns being too easily accessible by too many people intent on doing harm to others.

Then, I received a series of emails from physician leaders within SFMMS that not only echoed the same feelings of anger and frustration about the tragedies, but more importantly, strategized about what next steps we as physician advocates could take to move the needle on this issue on a local, state, and national level. As a result of our local physician leaders’ advocacy, within a few days, the California Medical Association Board of Trustees adopted a resolution calling on the U.S. Surgeon General to research and issue a report on firearm violence. What would have been just another heartbreaking news cycle, within just a few email replies, became quite the opposite. Instead of being alone in my despair and outrage, I felt empowered. And proud—proud to be a member of this medical society, proud to be among this group of dedicated professionals who refuse to lose hope.

There are many hazards in our work that threaten to take our power, our control, our hope, and our optimism away. We, after all, are human healers and not machines. Yet, the modern practice of medicine, for many of us, is filled with dehumanizing indignities. Understaffing, overscheduling, unnecessarily-complicated and inappropriately-crafted policies and procedures get between us and our care for our patients.

And yet, we work in a sacred space—hearing the most intimate of stories, bearing witness to moments in people’s lives when they face their greatest pain, their greatest loss, or as in the birth of a new life, their greatest joy. Our patients trust us with their care, and that is truly an honor. While we can be grateful for, and humbled by that privilege of healing others, we can and shouldalso be incredibly frustrated by the barriers that separate the practice we envision with the practice we face. My hope is that the former will always outweigh the latter. Unfortunately, it does not feel that way for many of us who are overworked and underappreciated.

While the path to professional satisfaction will be different for each individual physician, I truly believe a critical element will be the strength of our connection to each other. It nurtures the hope that even in the face of horrific events like mass shootings, we can deliver change through collective action. Study after study has demonstrated that despite external adverse conditions, having a sense of belonging, having “found your people,” and feeling seen, heard, invested in, and understood by others, is a key factor in personal and professional health1.

So, in 2023, how do we come together as a medical community? My hope, and my goal during this Presidency, is that SFMMS can be a fundamental part of that process for you. Perhaps it will be through a new connection with a colleague during one of our book clubs or in-person socials, or via a spark of personal curiosity ignited at one of SFMMS’ sponsored wellness retreats, or maybe from the knowledge and skills learned as a newly-equipped agent for positive change through our political advocacy work. You may have a different idea of what you’d like to see from SFMMS that would help you. I would love to hear it! I invite, encourage, and challenge you to join your colleagues in any (and all) of the above activities. I hope you lean into both the positive and negative emotions we experience as physicians, as humans. And most importantly, I hope that together, we will refuse to lose hope.

Heyman Oo, MD, MPH

Heyman Oo, MD, MPH is a primary care pediatrician and Site Medical Director at Marin Community Clinics in Novato. She also serves as an Information & Guidance Clinical Lead for the San Francisco Department of Public Health under the COVID-19 Task Force. She is a graduate of the UCSF Pediatric Leaders Advancing Health Equity (PLUS) Residency Program and obtained her MPH in Healthcare Policy and Administration at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has been involved in organized medicine since the beginning of her medical school years at UC San Diego and has been a member of SFMMS for almost a decade.