2016 HEALTH CARE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY: From Death to Medical Satire

(Adapted from CMA's news release, May 16, 2016)

The 2016 Western Health Care Leadership Academy welcomed nearly 500 attendees in San Francisco to hear about a range of topics from a dynamic lineup of speakers. These included Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship winner and a New Yorker columnist and author; Bennet Omalu, MD, the physician who identified chronic brain damage as a major factor in the deaths of NFL players; and entertainer, internist and founder of Turntable Health, ZDoggMD.

Dr. Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon, Harvard professor and author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, described how he learned to cope with mistakes he made in the operating room as a resident.

“I had to deal with my little imperfections and the complexities of the surgery itself,” said Dr. Gawande. Eventually he became comfortable with the surgeries and his own imperfections, but then faced an even more difficult phase of his surgical practice: How to treat those patients who did not do well after surgery.

“What do you do with those patients who do not get better? How do you help patients cope with death?” he asked the audience. “I am a surgeon. I want to fix everything in three hours.” But Dr. Gawande said he found his medical education sorely lacking in dealing with mortality. If you’ve read the articles in this issue by Drs. Molly Bourne and Scott Schmidt—“Hospice Is Plain Good Medicine” and “RESPECT at the End of Life," respectively—Dr. Gawande’s observation will sound familiar.

As a forensic pathologist, Dr. Omalu dealt with people after death. In his speech, he recounted the story of how he was on call at the coroner’s office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday when the body of Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster was brought into the pathology lab. It was this encounter with Webster that led to Dr. Omalu’s discovery—thanks to his independent, self-financed tissue analyses—of chronic brain damage (chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE) as a major factor in the early deaths of some NFL veterans. Dr. Omalu is currently the chief medical examiner for San Joaquin County and is a professor in the UC Davis Department of Medical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. His story inspired a book, Concussion, and a 2015 Hollywood movie of the same name starring Will Smith.

The surprise hit of the conference was Las Vegas internist, comedian and rapper ZDoggMD (also known as Zubin Damania, MD), who entertained and educated the crowd with his unique, insightful and hysterical health care rap parodies. At his ZDoggMD website Dr. Damania says, “During a 10-year hospitalist career at Stanford, I somehow won clinical teaching awards while simultaneously maintaining a shadow career performing standup comedy for medical audiences worldwide. . . . In Las Vegas, we’re making the leap from satire to actionable change by implementing an innovative model of health care delivery.” Turntable Health, founded in 2013, is a “membership model, team-based primary care ecosystem.” Dr. Damania’s TEDMED talk from the 2013 conference presents a more straightforward version of his ideas.

We had a great time at this year’s Western Health Care Leadership Academy. Mark your calendars for another memorable gathering next year in San Diego: May 5–7, 2017.