This year’s July 1 marked more than just the arrival of new interns and fellows; it also marked the establishment of three new roles in the department’s leadership. Josalyn Cho, MD, and Martha Carvour, MD, PhD, have officially begun their work as Vice Chair for Professional Development and Vice Chair for Quality and Safety, respectively. I have been excited to see what they will do in these roles since we concluded the search process in April. I have asked them to say a bit at the end of this post about what their initial focus will be as they get underway. The third role is the interim director of the Division of Hospital Medicine, held by Jeydith Gutierrez, MD, MPH. This new division is an exciting strategic development that will help University of Iowa Health Care further cement its status as a health systems solution for Iowans across the entire state. I have asked Dr. Gutierrez to join me to discuss her vision and plans next Thursday, July 24, at noon for my Quarterly Department Update.

Upi’s “Oh, WOW” Moment
No spoilers, but one of the facts Dr. Gutierrez will discuss is the expansion of this new division with the hiring of 24 physicians and two APPs to serve our in-patient population. This is by no means the end to our staffing challenges, but it is a massive step in the right direction. To recruit and onboard even one faculty member takes a large amount of work, and more than two dozen in such a short period is clearly a tremendous lift by many people on our team, including the outgoing General Internal Medicine Interim Division Director Kevin Glenn, MD. It should be said too that much of this recruitment work, not just for Hospital Medicine but for the whole department is managed by our dedicated and talented Human Resources team led by Kaila Boothroy. I am grateful for her leadership and the professionalism of everyone on her team. Thank you!

Photo for reflection

The recipe for successful leadership requires a lot of quality ingredients, from communication to flexibility. But one of the key measures I have been thinking about lately is support for the next generation. My dad turned 92 last week. It is hard to imagine all the changes he has seen over these years and what he has adapted to in each decade. What has always been consistent from him though is his support for me. This photo of toddler-aged me perched on his shoulder is so representative of our relationship and the ways in which he has always propped me up. Whether it was words of encouragement or even challenging questions at critical decision points, I have been able to count on my dad’s wisdom to guide me. His has always been my model for how I want to mentor, how I have wanted to be mentored, and how I coach others into mentoring roles.

Martha Carvour, MD, PhD
I am grateful for this forum to talk about my vision for the Vice Chair for Quality and Safety role. I am humbled by the opportunity to serve and to begin defining what this new position can do for our patients and for the members of this department. Each person here is at the center of the mission to make our existing care systems safer and easier to navigate. By keeping the focus on the people—the physicians, advanced practice providers, postgraduate learners, staff, and students—we keep our focus on delivering safe, efficient, high-quality care to the patients and their families who rely on us. The successful end result of our effort will not be to create more work, but to ensure the hard work we already perform is strategically targeted, documented, and reproducible.

Like any effective effort in science, our work will rely on data, and we will be rigorous about the accuracy and reliability of that data. As you know, we are held accountable for metrics like hospital length of stay and patient satisfaction. Our performance on these metrics depends on how we care for our patients and on how the data are collected and reported. Over the next few months, we will take a close look at these data and the methods we use to collect and report them. We want to make sure these tell an accurate story of the patients we serve and the care we already provide. Our confidence in that story will, in turn, make us more confident we have accurately identified the ways we can improve our care systems. We will share more information about what we are learning.

Although I have studied health systems for some time and worked to resolve systems challenges in other contexts, I am now only a couple weeks officially into this role. These are still early days. As we begin to settle on specifics, we will plan to hold some forums to share our progress and to hear from you about how you view issues around quality and safety. If you are interested in contributing to this effort or sharing your thoughts, please feel free to reach out to me by email. I want to thank Drs. Upi Singh, Kim Staffey, Ethan Kuperman, Karen Brust, Jeydith Gutierrez, and Kevin Glenn for their guidance in this initial phase of the process and Amy McDonald, Nikki Carney, Kaila Boothroy, Sherry Mattison, and Trevor Jackson for their ongoing support with logistics.

Josalyn Cho, MD
Thank you to Upi for giving me this space to talk a little bit about how I view the role and where I plan to focus my efforts. I am honored and excited to serve the department in this capacity. Mentoring, advocacy, and service to others are what I find inspiring about academic medicine, and I am grateful that professional development is a department priority. Our individual progress in our careers is dependent on guidance, both in the form of sensible and consistent documented processes and in the form of engaged and encouraging mentors who have established their own successful careers

Over the last few months, I have connected with colleagues at other institutions around the country who have developed effective and sustainable programs for faculty development. I have also already met with several leaders in our department to identify strengths in our existing programs and opportunities to improve. This has given me a good starting point, but over the next few months, we will gain a much more comprehensive understanding of the current landscape, identifying the department’s needs, best practices, and how our resources are currently deployed and where they can be more efficiently targeted and even expanded. We will also gauge our need for specific career stages and promotion tracks.

I will need your help and I’m grateful to those who have already contributed in conversation and in encouragement. If you are interested in growing as a mentor or in helping refine how our department supports faculty in their growth, please reach out. I will be convening a series of focus groups with a cross-section of members to gain a comprehensive view of needs and opportunities. Your input will be valuable and essential in preserving what is already successful and where we should focus our efforts. I look forward to sharing our progress in the months to come.