What Is In a Name? Consequences of Expansion and Diversification
Note: This Presidential message also appears in the March 2011 issue of CHEST Physician.
For more than 75 years, the name “American College of Chest Physicians” has become synonymous with excellence in education, innovation in guideline development, and leadership in the management of diseases of the chest. The ACCP takes pride in providing the majority of practicing pulmonologists in the United States with these opportunities. As we have grown through the years, our success has piqued interest from a broader constituency of care providers. We have always been inclusive of other chest physicians, including cardiologists, cardiac and chest surgeons, radiologists, pediatricians, emergency medicine specialists, and others. We have also expanded our programs to match the scope of pulmonary practice as it incorporated both critical care and sleep medicine.
But at an even higher level, the ACCP has become more encompassing and more integrated by embracing a broader group of chest practitioners. For some time now, the ACCP has also included among its members, the important community of health-care professionals who provide frontline support for patients with chest-related illnesses. This important and growing component of our membership allows us to be more inclusive, and, in doing so redefines the “P” in ACCP to include nurse ‘P’ractitioners, ‘P’hysician assistants, ‘P’harmacists, and res’P’iratory therapists, among others. This is critical to our strategic focus on educational efforts that involve health-care teams engaged in the increasingly multidisciplinary approach to patient care.
An expansion is also taking place at the other end of our name. We have always been an international society, since the “A” in ACCP has been inclusive of the US and Canada for many years. We have close ties to the Canadian Thoracic Society. Many Canadian practitioners have dual membership, we regularly host our annual meeting in Canada, and just last year, a Canadian physician was elected into the Presidential line of the ACCP.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Our world is becoming more connected through technology and more accessible with cheaper travel. As Thomas Friedman’s best-seller title indicates, “The World is Flat.” Global connectivity in the Internet era has broadened our horizons and eliminated obstacles to communicating with colleagues on other continents. There is no better example of this flattening than our experience with the CHEST journal. With its electronic accessibility for international members, growing popularity, translation into other languages, highly clinically relevant content, and climbing impact factor, it is no wonder that the CHEST brand is more widely known than ACCP, the organization that publishes it.
As a result of greater global connectivity, the past decade has brought a steep rise in international requests of ACCP for meeting endorsements and participation abroad. A specific committee has been set up to handle these requests and organize our global efforts. As a result, we have witnessed record numbers of international attendees at the annual CHEST meeting (over 30% in 2010) and an evolution of our international education efforts to now include multiyear contracts for simulation, postgraduate seminars, and enduring education products.
This initiative represents an important strategic opportunity and commitment for ACCP—to support chest physicians across the world as we do in North America. As a result, we also derive benefit from collaborations with a diverse group of colleagues sharing novel approaches to care delivery and bringing a unique patient mix to complement and enrich everyone’s educational experience. To this end, we are introducing the inaugural Global Case Reports session at CHEST 2011 in Hawaii, where interesting cases from around the world will be presented and discussed in one venue during Sunday’s program. This all occurs at the first meeting of CHEST to be held off the North American continent. Thus the “A” in ACCP could be redefined to include ‘A’ll countries in which chest medicine is practiced.
Having a membership that is interdisciplinary (inclusive of nonphysician practitioners) and geographically diverse results in cultural, professional, and personal enrichment of our programs, leadership, and education offerings. To be sure that we capture that diversity and employ it in support of the College, I announced last fall plans to create a Presidential Task Force on Diversity. It gives me great pleasure to announce that this task force has been created and is being led by two icons in the field: Marilyn Foreman, MD, MS, FCCP, from Morehouse School of Medicine; and Sola Olopade, MD, MPH, FCCP, from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. They co-chair a broad-based group of senior ACCP members and staff to review current ACCP approaches to diversity and promotion of health equity. The charge of the task force is to develop an encompassing, enduring plan to ensure optimal integration of diversity throughout the activities and structure of the ACCP. This approach will help define new opportunities when applied to the international arena and when used to link our broad membership of care providers in a multidisciplinary fashion. The ACCP is one of only a few societies making diversity and attention to disparities such a high priority. Being on this forefront allows us to provide greater value to our members and to their patients.
I welcome your comments and invite you to reflect on this article or express your thoughts about the ACCP or related topics.
About the Author
David Gutterman
About From the Presidents
To enhance coordination and collaboration among ACCP members and leaders like you, the College launched the From the Presidents blog. From the Presidentswill feature blogs about the College, medical and health-care issues, the medical profession, and other member-related topics of interest. The posts will be written by David D. Gutterman, MD, FCCP, ACCP Immediate Past President; Suhail Raoof, MBBS, FCCP, ACCP President; Darcy D. Marciniuk, MD, FCCP, ACCP President-Elect; and Michael Baumann, MD, FCCP, President-Designate. Learn more about the presidents.
The goals of From the Presidents,as described by ACCP President David Gutterman, are twofold. First, the presidents want to directly inform members about issues important to the ACCP. Second, the presidents want to encourage two-way conversations by soliciting feedback from members on these issues and encourage member input on other items of relevance to the College.
