I was installed as Chair of the AUPHA Board at our Annual Meeting in New Orleans, and I would like to begin this blog with two very important acknowledgments of thanks. The first is to Dr. Mark Diana for his service as Chair. The past year I have come to know and appreciate his leadership talents, which are many. But, his abilities regarding relationship building and developing team members to perform well should be recognized. For example, under Mark’s direction, we as a board set aside our business as usual agenda for our board meeting last month and focused on our strategic plan. The conversations were lively, informative, and productive. Designated, protected time for collaborative opportunities to reflect, challenge, and plan is needed. And Mark understands this.
My second acknowledgment of thanks and appreciation is to our esteemed President and CEO of AUPHA, Dr. Jerry Glandon. As you may know, in July after our Annual Meeting, Jerry announced his plans to retire on 31 October 2019. He has worked in this field over 35 years, and he has given the last six to us at AUPHA. He is the epitome of strength, calmness, and kindness. His strength lies in his ability to listen carefully and respond thoughtfully, while all the while making sure you knew you were a valued member of the profession. He is an advocate of us and our field; he will be missed.
This year’s meeting was successful, and we experienced the largest attendance (397) on record! Resiliency and relevancy in a time of change served as our theme, and comments from respondents to the evaluation survey indicated that topic was timely and well received. One attendee commented,
“I never thought about resiliency in a systematic way before; the topic was approached in a variety of ways, so diverse applications of the concept were evidence. The meeting will challenge me to think about resiliency in a rigorous and supportive way.”
What follows in this blog are some of my remarks at the Annual Business Meeting. While I was not aware of Jerry’s plans to retire this fall, I believe the comments are still relevant. I would like to hear your thoughts as well, so please reach out to me or post yours to the AUPHA Open Forum.
Good afternoon. It is good to see you.
I was asked to speak on thoughts about the future of AUPHA, and, simply put, I know our future is strong because of who we are, what we do, and what we care about.
Let me explain—
I work at a university that has symbols all around to remind us that we are a part of something larger than us. Most, if not all, universities have a symbol, but this university has the symbol of a pirate accompanied with a sound . . . the sound a pirate utters, “Arghhh.” No matter where I travel, if I am wearing clothing that identifies my university, I will hear, “Arghhh!” from a fellow passenger. I may not know them, but I know what the sound means. It means that we are a part of something larger than us—no matter where we go.
We at AUPHA have a sound, too. Well, rather it is a phrase. It is “Good to see you!”
Leonard Friedman said that to me when I attended my first AUPHA meeting. So did Lou Rubino, Diane Howard, Lydia Middleton, Janet Davis and others I met that June. At the poster session this year, a presenter said to me how much she appreciated my welcoming her. I consider that high praise indeed, as I am continuing the AUPHA tradition—that of acknowledging that it is good to see her with us. We are a part of something larger than us.
Last year, under the editorship of Michael Meacham, conference attendees received the text Looking Back to Look Forward—it is an excellent history of our organization, and it is important to know, as it is our foundation. And equally important is our remaining aware and knowledgeable about our changing healthcare industry and the education environments in which we work while maintaining our focus on fostering excellence and innovation. This excellent history, however, is dependent about the structure put in place and the people who occupy the space.
We have a team at AUPHA. They are positive, collegial, and committed to helping us be better—better leaders, servants, and educators. My sincere admiration goes to Jerry Glandon, who has dedicated his working life to the educational mission; to Jaime Stephens who has maintained operations seamlessly. To Liza Assefa, Carly Evans, Mark Ryan, Chris Sanyer, and Jason Walker—my thanks.
In popular literature, psychologist Adam Grant writes about the power of service and long-term success via giving of our time and talents to help others.
Political and cultural commentator David Brooks speaks to the importance of community and relationships.
Astrophysicist Erika Hamden underscores the importance of the team.
I sometimes think they must have attended our meetings, and the experience helped to spark their comments.
We may begin at AUPHA with our sound/our phrase. “It is good to see you,” but I have found we also follow up--
We connect, we share, we promote. That is us. That is AUPHA.
I know our future is strong because of our people who established the culture that allows for change and effective response to change. And, we do not mind doing the work needed to ensure success.
At my university, I spend a lot of time leading a team on creating interprofessional collaborative opportunities. Teams are a good thing particularly when we are part of something larger than ourselves. Working on effective teams, we are able to educate a work force that is ready for what this future is bringing. And we know, some of what the future brings will be challenging. To face those challenges, we need to empower them to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities.
We do so by:
fostering an innovative environment that values interprofessional collaboration and practice,
sharing knowledge about interprofessional and team skills, and
providing opportunities to explore and engage collaboratively .
Collaboration is one of AUPHA’s core values. This necessitates us to work closely with our partners and with those in other disciplines to be a part of the future of the broader health education system.
This is a natural fit with global initiatives as well. More than in the US, our global partners may benefit from interprofessional education to maximize health-related workforce training as many do not have the discipline silos we experience. They need to be an integrated team for efficiency and effectiveness.
Research about teams also indicates that diversity is key to effective team performance. People come to the table with different sets of assumptions. But, this diversity with inclusion (another one of our core values) is more open—we need to prepare our students to work effectively with other health professionals. And as an added bonus to us, these professions have done a better job with attracting minority professional members; so, interprofessional collaboration might even help with our conventional diversity objectives.
Concerning graduate and undergraduate programs, AUPHA includes and welcomes both. We are professors of undergraduate and graduate programs. All levels should be part of this interprofessional initiative. We need to be part of the team—we need a place at the table.
Our programs also must have tools to be able to reach out on their campus and elsewhere to initiate and participate in collaborations.
AUPHA holds values of excellence, innovation, collaboration, diversity and learning—these are all integral to interprofessionalism. These are related to our working with partners within our discipline as well as external to it.
It is up to us to meet this future--ready to work, ready to learn, ready to move forward by doing what we do well and changing so we may be better. My vision of AUPHA is that a part of this direction will be to develop more of an interprofessional culture through professional development, collaborative networking, and interprofessional immersion experiences.
I see this future as related to our conference themes. To meet change, we must expand our relevance as well as hone our resilience skills. How do we help others shore up their reserves of resilience?
Diane Couto wrote that resilient people have a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often supported by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise.
These three characteristics hold true for resilient organizations as well.…Resilient people and organizations face reality with staunchness, make meaning of hardship instead and get ready to work, and improvise solutions to take action.
I mentioned earlier that the board is working on our strategic plan. You may be proud of your colleagues on this board. They are resilient; they understand the importance of relevance; and they are compelled to serve by a sense of duty, responsibility to give back to their profession, and they enjoy the experience of serving on the team. We have fun working together.
As I close, please consider this question, “What compels you to serve in AUPHA?”
I am humbled from the trust you all have shown for my serving this upcoming year, and friends,
“It is good to see you.”