Veronica M. Catanese,MD,MBA AFCR President,1995–1996

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” My years on the National Council of the AFCR/AFMR, which spanned the decade of the 1990's, indeed were watershed ones. Over that period, the concept of the physician-scientist, an equilateral triangle with sides of research, teaching and patient care, peaked and then progressively transformed into something far more scalene. As the frontiers of biomedical science exploded, the margins of clinical care narrowed and the residual value of teaching diminished, the physician-scientist underwent an identity crisis. Many of us, myself included, bemoaned the coming extinction of this “integrated” physician which we aspired (and had trained) to be. I still have the slides (how quaint!) from “Academic Medicine in the 21^st Century: Lessons from the Dinosaurs,” a 1996 look forward to where we would be by the end of the century.

Change was in the air, and after the winds stopped blowing, we all were a little lopsided, but intact. What emerged was an integrated entity in which the three parts of the academic medicine mission were embodied not so much in one exceptional individual, but in a team or group of exceptional individuals whose collective and collaborative identities reconstituted that equilateral triangle. For the first time in a long time, we had to face and respect the fact that individuals may contribute to the academic mission in different ways: ways that all of us, regardless of our area of expertise or experience, must learn to understand, validate and value. Those lessons learned experientially through the AFCR/AFMR formed the basis for how I approach my role in a brand new medical school now. Those are the lessons for which I am grateful beyond measure, and which I hope to transmit to those who work and learn alongside me.