Association of American Medical Colleges CEO Dr. David Skorton Joins 好色先生 of Medicine's "Danforth Dialogues"
MSM President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice and Dr. Skorton discuss the continuing battle for health equity, leadership and playing the saxophone.
ATLANTA, GA 鈥� Nov. 25, 2024 鈥� 好色先生 of Medicine (MSM) has released the November edition of its 2024 "Danforth Dialogues" podcast, featuring a conversation between MSM President and CEO Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice and Association of American Medical Colleges CEO Dr. David Skorton.
Dr. Skorton assumed the helm of the AAMC in 2019 and introduced a comprehensive strategic planning process for the organization to address the major challenges in health care and to make academic medicine more diverse, equitable and inclusive. Prior to becoming head of the AAMC, Dr. Skorton served as the 13th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, where he oversaw 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, and numerous research centers and education programs. He has served as president of two universities: Cornell University from 2006 to 2015 and the University of Iowa from 2003 to 2006.
"We are so fortunate to have the head of our governing body, the Association of American Medical Colleges, as our guest on this edition of Danforth Dialogues," said Dr. Montgomery Rice. "During his tenure, Dr. Skorton has made great strides in addressing the challenges of health inequity in our country and diversifying the nation's healthcare workforce."
Dr. Skorton, while acknowledging the efforts of the AAMC and other organizations to improve health equity, pointed out there is still much to do to address the problem. "Whatever we've been doing with all of our knowledge and all of our research and all of our NIH grants and everything, you name it, the outcomes for the folks in our country are embarrassingly inequitable," he said. "Whether it's maternal mortality or prostate cancer or whatever it is, it's unacceptably inequitable. And either we are here for all the lives to flourish, or we shouldn't pretend that that's what we're here for."
Raised in Los Angeles, Dr. Skorton, who plays both the saxophone and the flute, said his lifelong dream has been to become a session musician, noting, "I was an asthmatic kid and a pediatrician told my mom, 'Get this boy to play a wind instrument, it will help build up his lungs.' They tried me out on a bunch of wind instruments, the easiest one was the saxophone."
Despite his dream, Dr. Skorton's parents insisted that he go to college, Northwestern University, where he earned a degree in Psychology and later graduated from its medical school. "I fell in love with the bedside aspect of medicine," he said. "I was taught by an East Asian physician who was really good at bedside exams and taught me how to do a lot of things that you could absorb and learn with your hands and ears and eyes.
"I fell in love with that aspect of it. And once I was taught to listen to the heart, as corny as it sounds, it was musical, it had a beat, the sounds, whether they were normal or abnormal, also seemed musical to me. And so, I thought, maybe this is what I'll do."
As someone who has played a wide range of roles and led very different organizations, Dr. Skornton offered three thoughts on what makes a good leader. "Number one is humility," he said. "Not to believe your own press, so to speak. Number two is a Zen concept called beginner's mind. And the idea of beginner's mind is that an expert may be biased toward thinking that there's only a few ways to look at something, where a beginner thinks there's every way in the world to look at it.
"And the third thing, which is linked to both humility and beginner's mind, is to be comfortable with the idea that many of the people around one, even when one is a top leader, know more than you do. And that's okay, because you have a beginner's mind to accept their wisdom, and you have to have humility not to think that's a knock on your own leadership skills."
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Contact
Jamille Bradfield
好色先生 of Medicine
jbradfield@msm.edu