First Reflections on the 2011 AUPHA Conference

I just returned from the AUPHA Conference in Charleston. Reflecting upon the sessions and the conversations I am struck by the strength of commitment to prepare graduate students to effectively manage the dramatic changes taking place in healthcare today. These women and men, living in the "publish or perish" world of higher education and the "politics" within universities, have real commitments to their students and to helping less-experienced scholars entering the field become effective teachers. There is a deep awareness that the quality of classroom teaching literally means the life or death of future patients and the success or failure of healthcare organizations.

Seeing Patterns in Data, Taking Actions in Life

As a university teacher I have taught on an number of campuses during my career. A few students remain in mind through the years for either having made a lasting positive impression or a lasting negative impression. I remember one student in a previous university employment who told me that as a public official her preparation for the prospect of a deadly epidemic would be to buy lots of coffins. I was at the time trying to teach her and other graduate students to use computer modeling to gain insights into dynamic complex systems so as to be able to take informed preemptive actions. In retrospect I realize that I should have been better prepared to demonstrate use of the software to my graduate students. But neither my colleagues nor my students seemed to appreciate the pedagogical use of computer simulations to help students better understand complex systems. I think now that if I had only shown students a computer simulation rather than asking them to think through the modeling of one the assignment would have been deemed acceptable. I have for years advocated that the academic field of public administration become more of a design science with ties not only to political science, management and business administration, but also to operations research. I take some comfort in the thought that Herbert Simon, if he were still with us and if he knew, would approve of my efforts, even if my efforts have on occasion contributed to the mobility of my career.

These memories were sparked this evening upon viewing the following TEDMED 2010 presentation. Jay Walker spoke of the origins of public health statistics using a Bills of Mortality book prepared during London's great plague of 1665. To me, his point is that data is the necessary basis of information that can support the knowledge needed to recognize patterns and design interventions.

If you would like to view the video directly from the YouTube site the URL is as follows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IRsqDnPzSE

Continuing to learn and reflect

I am spending the holidays both preparing to teach again this spring semester and anticipating becoming a student again at Medical College of Georgia. I plan to teach the capstone course in the masters of public administration program in a new and different way this time. I want my students to reflect upon themselves, what they have learned in the program, and how they hope to apply what they have learned in their future careers. As I think about my own future I find myself doing exactly what I hope they will do.

At an age at which many people anticipate retirement I am anticipating the next chapter in my career/life. My work is too much my life and I don't want to retire. I had difficulty with career decisions early in my life for multiple reasons. One needs to be proactive about one's career choice. Compared to some of my colleagues my vitae is not a neat linear progression. A Methodist bishop once said that in order to become a bishop one must know one's career path by age 16. In most vocations today preparation meets opportunity and one one proceeds forward by a series of hypotheses. I think one is well advised to follow one's heart but with a solid sense of what kinds of opportunities are likely to unfold.

Experience is valuable if not clung to too tightly. I hope for myself what I hope for my (generally much younger) students. I hope to make good choices based on reasonable hypotheses. I hope to have good instructors at Medical College of Georgia, while continuing to strive to be a good instructor to my students. In a way, we are each becoming what we have always been. It is a wonderful thing to teach; a better thing to learn; and wisdom to realize that the final examination is what one actually does with one's life.