I’m used to being surrounded by people who are passionate about transforming systems. I’ve spent many years involved in organizing grassroots movements, health advocacy, and health equity campaigns in the minority and immigrant communities. And the year before I started residency, I studied for a masters degree in public health where I focused on these same issues, along with more scientific training in molecular and infectious disease epidemiology. But as a resident, I have had to make some tough choices.
Even though I am back in Chicago where I attended college and first got involved working with minority and immigrant health issues, my community organizing, for now, will take a back seat to my education and service duties. And even though I sometimes reminisce about and miss the electrifying momentum involved in pushing toward such social change, I know that once I’m finished my training that I can return to contributing to these movements again on a more personal level. So I’m fine with the decisions I’ve had to make. We all have to make choices about what is most important at that specific time in our lives.
And so as a resident, I’ve focused my thoughts and efforts on how to create a movement within pathology to question our role on the clinical patient care team and to engage those in our profession to respond to this question – reasons why I got more involved with ASCP and CAP. With the gradual implementation of portions of the ACA since 2008 that is now moving into a more palpable phase, pathologists, tech staff, and residents have an opportunity to show our worth to the health care team. We have the opportunity to show that we are the experts in data interpretation and that in terms of more complicated testing such as flow cytometry, cytogenetics, or molecular tests, that the pathologist would be the best person to order the most appropriate tests.
No one knows better that we do what are the costs, indications, and limits of specific tests and despite what non-pathologists may think, we were trained just as they were in how to work up a patient and differential diagnosis. So who better to choose the right test for the right patient at the right time? I know that pathologists have the reputation of being not the most vocal or interactive doctors so how do we engage not just our leaders but also pathologists in general to take more ownership of patient care decisions and to speak up? How do we train our next generation to also see this as the big picture?
In grassroots organizing, strategy requires an understanding of the power dynamics and forces involved in decision making within the system one wants to change. So what drives pathologists and pathologists-in-training and how do we light a fire within our profession not to waste this opportunity that has been provided by health care reform to redefine our role within the patient care team? How do we nurture true patient advocates? I’ve been a little frustrated with these thoughts lately so please leave a comment with suggestions on how you think that we can accomplish these goals.
–Betty Chung, DO, MPH, MA is a second year resident physician at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System in Chicago, IL.
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