Dr. James Nataro
Some of you may remember that last year, during the State of the Department presentation, I challenged each faculty member to contribute at least one piece of scholarship each year. We talked about case reports, commentaries, original research papers, and/or web-based contributions. Why is this important?
What distinguishes the academic medical center from the community hospital is innovation. Our place in society is the frontier of medicine, which includes not only medical science but also care delivery, patient satisfaction, quality of care, education, and more. Innovation is putting ideas into practice; scholarship is communicating these ideas to the community. Innovation is what we do; scholarship is how we tell the world about it.
I would like to foster a culture in which all of us innovate and all of us communicate about it. Innovation can be in any arena; all areas are equally valued. If we look around us, we will find that this is not a high bar to set. Our educational programs are top-notch. We have creative and energized faculty in every one of our clinical venues. Our faculty have chosen careers in academic medicine because they like to do new things, they like to create, and they like to teach and talk about it. Scholarship is a natural extension.
This year I invite the dialog centering around how we can promote and reward both innovation and scholarship. I believe that we have created an infrastructure which will support these contributions, but I need to hear from you about how we can do this better.
Filed Under: Features
Tags: dept-chair, JPN2R