D epartment
of
M edicine
Con ne c ti ng T e c h n o lo g y , Ed uca t i o n a n d D i s cove ry w ith H um anis m in Me dicine
Interventional Pulmonology
Pictured from Left to Right Dr. John Callison, Dr. Paul Branca, Dr. Michael McCormack and Dr. J. Francis Turner, Jr.
Interventional Pulmonology (IP) is an expanding area of interest in the specialty of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. The origins of this specialty can be traced back to the introduction of rigid bronchoscopy by Gustav Killian in Germany and Chevalier Jackson in the United States. In 1962, Professor Shigeto Ikeda, a thoracic surgeon in Japan, developed a flexible bronchoscope and with the exhortation from Professor Ikeda to “Never Give Up,” the marriage of this specialty as art and science has continued to expand. Under the leadership of Dr. Dhand, the Department of Medicine is fortunate to have several physicians who are board certified in pulmonary and critical care medicine who specialize in the application of these techniques. Military medicine has always had a strong educational program in interventional techniques and pulmonary medicine. Owing to this, Dr. Michael McCormack obtained a wealth of experience during his training and, then, while serving as a military pulmonologist
Vol. 6 Issue 4 October 2017
in the Army. After completing a Pulmonary Medicine fellowship at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center and a Critical Care Medicine fellowship at University of Utah in Salt Lake City, he was an attending at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, in addition to being the Chief of Pulmonary Outpatient Medicine for the Army Pacific Theater. Another Army veteran, Dr. J. Francis Turner, Jr, completed his Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado and was then named pulmonary function laboratory director and assistant director of the ICU. Subsequently, Dr. Turner was honored to become one of the first formally trained Interventional Pulmonology fellows in the United States, working at the R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center at the University of Maryland and under the direct tutelage of Dr. Ko-Pen Wang, who invented transbronchial needle aspiration through the flexible bronchoscope at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Since his fellowship, Dr. Turner specializes in treating complex airway lesions and has been an IP director at both University and VA hospitals and was Director of IP at the National Naval Medical Center (Walter Reed National Military Medical Center) in 2008-2009. A member of the Board of Directors for the national governing body for interventional pulmonology (AABIP) for eight years, he is an editor and author of “Flexible Bronchoscopy,” the gold standard IP textbook (1). In addition to his teaching duties at UT, he is a consultant to the Chinese Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology and frequently travels to China and other countries to teach advanced pulmonary techniques. Dr. Paul Branca is our board certified interventional pulmonologist and member of the American Association for Bronchology. After completing his Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine fellowship continued on page 2
Points of View
Quetel’s concept, and proposed the “law of deviation from average” which suggested the average was mediocre and introduced the concept of ranking individuals. According to this law, people above the average were “superior” to those who were below the average. In the late nineteenth century, Frederick Taylor, an American, proposed the application of averagarianism to industrial and business practices, and his vision (“Taylorism”) was embraced worldwide. Another American psychologist, Edward Thorndike, further advanced this practice, arguing in favor of a similar approach to education. He enthusiastically advocated for ranking in schools to sort students according to their deviation from an average. We continue to employ this ranking system for over one hundred years since the early twentieth century. Rose argues in his book that while averages are helpful for comparing groups of individuals with regard to their physical and mental health, personality or economic state, using them to compare between individuals has absolutely no factual or scientific basis. However, the concept of ranking has become so firmly ingrained
We believe so many concepts as firmly established “truths,” but they do not hold up to careful scrutiny. For example, we rely heavily on averages to determine grading and ranking of individuals. We constantly measure individuals by how close they are to an average or how much they rise above or fall below the “norm.” We employ such measures to compare performance in schools, for admission to Rajiv Dhand, MD, Chair colleges, and even to screen individuals for admission to our residency programs. In his book The End of Average, Todd Rose traces the origins of this concept. In the nineteenth century, Adolphe Quetel, a Belgian mathematician, first came up with the notion of an “average man” as an ideal. Later, a British mathematician, Sir Francis Galton, modified
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