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New Year's Reflections

January 03 , 2007

The first month of our year is named after Janus, the Roman god with two faces. One face looks at the past year and the other looks at the year ahead. Indeed, this time of year is traditionally a time of reflection upon the past year, and a time for vows about the year ahead. For many, self-improvement tops the list of vows--better nutrition, vigorous exercise, spending more time with family, saving more money for college tuition and retirement, and pursuing that special project or dream that's been on hold.

Most certainly, I have my share of personal vows, and if I can get past the Superbowl Sunday snacks, not to mention Valentine's Day chocolates, I will be well on my way. But over the past couple of weeks, I have taken time to put on my Dean's hat and reflect upon the School and its missions, backwards and forwards.

Despite the well-worn jokes about New Year's resolutions--that they are pointless and made only to be broken--I would argue that each of us has two intellectual capacities that can aid us personally and professionally when we think back and think ahead: memory and imagination. Our memories allow us to step back from the moment and reach into the recesses of times gone by. We can recall: "What a great decision it was for the family to move to Rochester," or "It was really a good instinct for me to go into Pediatrics. It fits me so well." Imagination allows us to project ahead: "I would really look great if I were two sizes smaller," or "Maybe this enzyme that I've been studying in white blood cells will be the key to HIV treatment."

As applied to the School, memory and imagination are also important. A clear and honest memory provides an unvarnished historical view, and allows us to understand the forces at work in shaping where we are today. To the extent that our ‘today" presents challenges, we need to use our imagination to envision new and productive ways of thinking about the future.

In my recent series on optimizing space and other resources, some of this history was reviewed. I think we understand clearly the forces at work that have led to our current academic and clinical environments. It was the right decision to build our new research buildings and greatly expand our scientific faculty. But our accumulated commitments--in dollars and space--have eclipsed the funding streams to support them adequately in the future at the current trajectory of growth. It was the right decision to become more bold in our regional health care marketplace, but our clinical capacity has become inadequate to meet the demands for patient services at the current trajectory of growth.

Given this memory, this history, how do we imagine the future? Standing with great humility in the presence of our vast resources--the extraordinary human and physical capital that drives our enterprise--my instinct is to imagine a future in which quality and impact is emphasized above all else. Given the resources available, which are substantial, we owe our students the highest quality education that we can imagine and deliver, we owe our scientists a level of infrastructure--facilities, research cores, grants administration, regulatory support, etc.--that will promote cutting-edge, high impact science, and we owe our patients and clinicians facilities and a culture that promotes quality and safety in clinical care above all else. This level of care will favorably impact the health of our community and region, and will serve as a model that can impact health in other communities.

To align memory and imagination as an action verb, one must act. In the words of psychologist Karl Weick, "We are more likely to act our way into a new way of thinking than to think our way into a new way of acting." To maintain your weight, you must burn up as many calories as you take in. In the case of the medical school, we must align the growth of our academic and clinical programs with the projected growth in our financial assets. The chassis must be able to accommodate comfortably the vehicle it supports. If the chassis becomes overloaded, quality suffers.

So I hope you will join me in resolving to help the medical school place quality and impact as its key drivers. This is not a new-year's resolution, just as your personal resolutions should not be new-year's resolutions. One revolution of the earth around the sun is marked by different cultures on different days. It's Jan. 1 for the West, late January for the Chinese and all over the calendar for other cultures. Eating better, exercising more, and spending time with family are 365-day-per-year projects. As so it goes for the medical school. Every day is New Year's Day.

Meliora,

David S. Guzick, MD, PhD
Dean, School of Medicine and Dentistry