Although delivered to newly minted doctors eager to start their careers, commencement speeches can provide wisdom that resonates with all medical professionals. Here are highlights of some of this year's speeches as well as a look back through the years at poignant, insightful, and helpful comments from med school commencement addresses around the country. "As you move through residency and into your chosen careers, be nice to each other. Remember that the specialist you're consulting was once a classmate in a situation just like yours. Or remember that the primary care doctor who is calling you again was once your lab partner or a member of your study group. Remember that this profession is full of a network of friends, and treat each other accordingly. Don't think more of yourself than you ought. And don't think less of your colleague than you ought. Treat each other the way you want to be treated, with grace and professionalism and respect. We are all in this together." Kent Brantly, MD, at the Indiana University School of Medicine's 2015 Commencement Dr Brantly was one of TIME magazine's People of the Year for his work fighting Ebola virus and caring for virus-stricken patients. In the course of his work he contracted the disease himself and survived it. "Right now, we lead a 21st century doctor-patient relationship, where the patient becomes the captain of his or her ship and we are navigators. Where the patient is put in a position to make decisions based on our limitations of certainty, which actually come quicker than you think. And when we reach our limitations of certainty, the patient should feel comfortable not asking, 'Doc, what would you do?' but, 'Doc, what would you do if you were me?' Now that requires trust, that requires a relationship, that requires the reason we need physicians. That is the essential element of the doctor-patient relationship and it's the element that we need to feel proud of." Nortin M. Hadler, MD, at the University of Michigan Medical School's 2015 commencement Dr Hadler is the author of more than 200 papers and 12 books and is a renowned lecturer. "It's been said that no one learns as much about a subject as one who's forced to teach it. As you graduate now, with your doctor of medicine degree, think of the word doctor from the Latin docere: to teach. Whether you are taking the time to explain or teach concepts to one of your medical students, a patient or their family members, or a colleague, you will find that you will be challenged to continually deepen your own understanding." Luba Dumenco, MD, at the Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University's 2015 commencement Dr Dumenco is a lecturer in pathology and laboratory medicine, and the director of the preclinical curriculum at Brown University. "Breakthroughs often emerge through a combination of serendipity, persistence, daring, and collaboration. The discovery of cisplatin came completely from left field, from a physicist curious about bacteria and electricity. Yet it ended up transforming the way we treat cancer. As this story shows, sometimes an initial, seemingly random question or observation can set a whole chain of events in motion. Following a scientific story to its end can take us down an unpredictable path, but in the best cases, that path ultimately leads back to the patient." Laurie H. Glimcher, MD, at the Weill Cornell Medical College's 2015 commencement Dr Glimcher is the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College. "Recently, a very wise advisor said to me, 'Every leader has doubts and feels like a fraud at times. Surgeons excluded, of course.' The reality is, that while you have much to learn, you are very well trained. And you're part of a team. On a good team, your colleagues will be there for you—particularly the nurses, who are so much more experienced than you will be. So be an effective team member. Be humble, be curious, be bold, laugh a lot, enjoy your work, and celebrate your team. And more than anything else, remember that listening well to your patients is the starting point of great patient care." Richard J. Gilfillan, MD, at the Georgetown University School of Medicine's 2015 commencement Dr Gilfillan has twice topped Modern Healthcare's list of the 50 Most Influential Physician Executives and Leaders as CEO of CHE Trinity Health. "The poet William Butler Yeats wrote, 'Though the leaves are many, the root is one.' I hope each of you will always remember that while the leaves of medicine are many, the root is one...and that is the imperative to advance human health for all. Whether you are treating individual patients as a practicing physician; delving into the mysteries of life as a bench scientist; learning which therapies work best for which diseases as a clinical researcher; or addressing the broader issues of public health and health policy as a government official, you have the opportunity and responsibility to be part of a whole that's greater than yourselves." Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, at the Stanford University School of Medicine's 2012 commencement Dr Hamburg is the former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. "Possess your skills, but don't be possessed by them. Certainly your training has encouraged you to see the human side of your work, and you've examined the doctor-patient relationship. But still, the enormity of your task has required you to focus to such an extent on technique and data that you may not have had time enough to face your feelings along the way. You've had to toughen yourself to death. From your first autopsy when you may have been sick or cried or just been numb, you've had to inure yourself to death in order to be useful to the living. But I hope, in the process, you haven't done too good a job of burying that part of you that hurts and is afraid." Alan Alda at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons' 1979 commencement Alda is best known for his role as US Army surgeon "Hawkeye" Pierce in the long-running, critically acclaimed television show M*A*S*H. "There are many aspects to good character, but I want to highlight two: trust and respect. To be effective, your patients have to trust you, and just as importantly, your colleagues have to trust you. And speaking of colleagues, you have to respect them—all of them. It is important to remember that there are a lot of really smart, caring, committed, professional healthcare workers who do not have MD degrees. I think many of us are familiar with medical errors where, had someone listened to the nurse, or had the nurse felt respected and empowered to talk, a bad outcome could have been avoided. It goes without saying that trust and respect are important for your patients, but I believe that if patients are going to get the best and safest care, it is also paramount for healthcare teams." Georgette Dent, MD, at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine's 2014 commencement Dr Dent is an associate professor and associate dean for student affairs at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. 'It is our policy,' 'It's against the rule,' 'It would be a problem,' and even, incredibly, 'It is in your own best interest.' What is irrational is not those phrases; they seem to make sense. What is irrational is what follows those phrases, in ellipses, unsaid: 'It is our policy … that you cannot hold your husband's hand.' 'It is against the rules … to let you see this or to let you know this.' 'It would be a problem … if we treated you on your own terms not ours.' 'It is in your own best interest … to miss your daughter's moment of birth.' This is the voice of power, and power does not always think the whole thing through." Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, at the Yale School of Medicine's 2010 commencement Dr Berwick is a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. "If we look around the graduating class at every single difference you can see—everything obvious to your eye, from gender to skin color to eye color to size and shape—everything noticeable is the result of something less than one-tenth and a half percent of our genome makeup, but otherwise we are the same. Essentially, confirming all the teachings of all the great witnesses from immemorial—that what we have in common is more important than our interests and differences. You live in a world where you will only be able to appreciate the differences if we embrace what we have in common and act on it. I hope you will do that. If you do, you are going to have a great ride." President Bill Clinton at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine's 2010 commencement Bill Clinton served as the 42nd President of the United States. "The success of medical science has become, in a way, its undoing. We are dazzled by the knowledge we have acquired and rush to apply it to medical problems. This is understandable but often premature. Take the human genome, the true font of medical knowledge. It's all there, the answer to every question about human biology. The trouble is, the answers are written in a language we don't understand. It is a multidimensional and dynamic language. The products of the genome, both protein and RNA molecules, interact with one another and with the genome itself in a dance of dizzying complexity. At present, we can only dimly perceive the significance. We can grasp a tiny fraction of 1% of what there is to know and understand. Just imagine: If the medicine of today flows from this tiny bit of knowledge, how much more would be possible if we knew the remaining 99%? What more persuasive call to the pursuit of basic research can there be?" Roger Kornberg, PhD, at the Stanford University School of Medicine's 2008 commencement Dr Kornberg won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006. "When you examine a patient, if you think about it, it is also a timeless ritual, a crossing of a threshold. You are often in a ceremonial white gown; the patient is in a paper gown; the room is decorated with furniture unlike any room in your house or theirs; and in your hand, like some shaman, you carry stethoscopes and lights and tongue blades and reflex hammers. You stand there not as yourself but as the doctor, the latest in that lineage harking back, as we said, centuries. Your presence, your garb, the setting are all leading the patients to expect a ritual; they are most aware of it, and incredibly, as part of that ritual, they have given you the privilege of touching their body, something that in any other walk of life out of a special context would be considered assault, but they allow it of you… Celebrate the ritual. With every year of practice, be better at it than you were the previous year. Develop the skill just as you develop your knowledge." Abraham Verghese, MD, at the Stanford University School of Medicine's 2014 commencement Dr Verghese is Professor and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University, as well as a best-selling author. "Where are the authoritative medical voices that are noting the effects of rising ocean levels on people living in low-land habitats? The voices that are pointing out that warming will produce a resurgence of insect vectors for malaria, dengue, and other infectious diseases? And where are the medics who should be warning how crowding and hunger and water shortages will predispose our species to violence and other social maladies? On all of these topics, regardless of what policy changes are recommended, physicians have critically important perspectives to bring to the debates, but I don't hear our voices often enough amidst the general dim." Harold Varmus, MD, at the Baylor College of Medicine's 2013 commencement Dr Varmus is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and the 14th director of the National Cancer Institute. "Realize, dear graduates, that despite all that you have learned about the human body, it remains by and large a mysterious thing with many secrets yet to be uncovered. In spite of our marvelous technologies and the vast body of knowledge at hand, profound mysteries remain. And friends, some of you will unravel those mysteries, make those discoveries, and possibly, very possibly, change the way we practice medicine. So go forth and stay curious." Michael Zasloff, MD, PhD, at the Georgetown University School of Medicine's 2012 commencement Dr Zasloff was named Dean of Research and Translational Science at Georgetown in 2002. "The life of a doctor is an intense life. We are witnesses and servants to individual human survival. The difficulty is that we are also only humans ourselves. We cannot live simply for patients. In the end, we must live our own lives. Still, to live as a doctor is to live so that your life is bound up in others' and in science, and in the messy uncertain connection between the two." Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, at the Yale School of Medicine's 2004 commencement Dr Gawande has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1998, has written four New York Times bestsellers, and received a MacArthur Fellowship. "Be open to life-long learning. Science and technology are changing rapidly and you will need to keep up. Don't be afraid to admit your knowledge gaps and seek to fill them. The actual practice of medicine can be very dogmatic but the science is not. Innovations are often born from creative minds (like [23andMe co-founder and CEO] Anne Wojcicki), so as we like to say in industry, "Think out of the box" and make your voice heard. Be conscientious, competent, and compassionate in everything you do. Finally, don't underestimate the impact you can make in the exciting world of science and medicine, whether it is on the level of an individual patient and their family or on a larger public health scale." Anne de Papp, MD, at the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College's 2014 commencement Dr de Papp is executive director and global director of scientific affairs for Merck. "Be kind. Never forget this: The patient comes first and is always the most important person in the equation. Be compassionate; put yourself in their shoes. Learn something about them—where they went to school, what they do for a living, what they do for fun, what their kids do, what they like, what they don't like. Having them feel that you are rooting for them and you're interested in them can make a tremendous amount of difference." Joel Schwab, MD, at the Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago's 2013 commencement Dr Schwab was awarded the Gold Humanism Award in 2011. "We, all of us, can no longer remain within our exam rooms and ignore what is happening in our communities. As physicians and dentists, we must have a presence in both places. Our sacred responsibility is both to the patient in front of us and also to safeguard the health of the nation. It is a big responsibility but one that we are called to meet." Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, Harvard Medical School and School of Dental Medicine's 2014 commencement Dr Murthy is the current US Surgeon General. "Enter the next stages of your experience with a deep commitment to lifelong learning. I was speaking with a colleague at Harvard Medical School about what to encourage young physicians to do; he suggested to keep your eyes open for the unusual, the unexpected. Every patient you see has a new story to tell. Each will inspire observation and each should be a teaching lesson. Look for the surprise in the story, for it is in this way that new discoveries are made. The best research remains that which is patient-focused." Joseph Martin, MD, at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University's 2012 commencement Dr Martin is the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology and served as Dean of the Harvard Faculty Of Medicine from 1997 to 2007. "You should strive to make yourself invaluable, no matter what your role. You're going to hear from a lot of people, some of them successful senior colleagues, that you should focus on your own career—just do what you need to do to advance your career goals, whether they are in neurosurgery, neuroscience, pediatrics, or public policy. They will tell you to say no to distractions, like teaching, teaching assignments, or mentoring younger employees. They will tell you to decline committee service that doesn't advance your immediate interests. And, in general, not to take on anything that is not an obvious step on the path from where you are to where you want to be in 5 years. But that is a bankrupt philosophy. You want to become invaluable, and you become invaluable by saying yes. By helping when people ask you to help, by diving headlong into teaching and mentoring. You become invaluable by doing things that are not in your job description. That's what it means to do your job well." Jon Lorsch, PhD, at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's 2013 commencement Dr Lorsch is the director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Source
