A Labor of Love

Abstract

In recent weeks I have been involved in a labor of love. I have a treasure trove of more than 400 letters written by my father to his mother during his service in World War II, and I have been transcribing them. This has been an experience like none other for me: reading them is like visiting a foreign country that looks strangely familiar at every turn. At this stage in my transcribing, dad and his peers are currently in training at Coleman Field in Coleman, TX, in 1943 to be U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) pilots. (The USAAF did not become an independent entity — the U.S. Air Force of today — until September 18, 1947.) His view of being part of the colossal catastrophe of WWII, of being a 20-year-old with his buddies experiencing it all, is fascinating. What he thought and felt before being the recipient of the forces of life that shaped him — before meeting my mother, before knowing me — has been a humbling revelation. What I have discovered thus far is that these green, mostly small-town and rural boys had a vision. They wanted to change and shape America and the world for the better. The word “stewardship” has come to mind for me. The Oxford Dictionary defines stewardship as “the job of supervising or taking care of something.” History shows us that they did indeed take care of something as part of the Greatest Generation. Getting to know these kids who changed the world through their stewardship has prompted a challenge to me: What is my stewardship mission? My answer is to make the post-acute and long-term care space safer, more compassionate, more evidence based — and just all-around better. I choose to do this with stewardship through AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine and the Foundation for PALTC Medicine, and I extend that challenge to you. Your Foundation, the Society’s Board of Directors, and the American Board of PALTC Medicine (ABPLM) continue to align our goals. By cooperating on projects and with funding from the Foundation, we can improve the workforce in geriatrics and demonstrate the value of PALTC clinicians to improving the quality of care. This is stewardship in action. The final proposals for such collaborative efforts are pending, but the potential projects are listed below. The Society’s Board of Directors will:•Develop an accurate registry of skilled nursing facility medical directors across the country.•Create a template for AMDA-related entities to access civil monetary penalty funds (this will vary by state) to use in their quality-improvement activities.•Provide training to clinicians to assume leadership roles in PALTC. ABPLM will:•Continue efforts to raise the visibility of PALTC medical directors and clinicians. This year we will continue to move forward with projects beneficial to the Society’s membership, research, and the Foundation:•Neurologist Ilo Leppik, MD, will be administering a written survey to the membership on epilepsy care in long-term care. He will make a significant donation to the Foundation for our efforts and a donation to the Society per survey completed. Survey takers will receive complimentary access to a recording of the billing and coding session from the conference (a $20 value). Please support the Society, your Foundation, and better epilepsy care by taking the survey.•The Society has a new Learning Management System site up and running. In addition to our popular continuing medical education topics such as billing and coding, it will have a non-CME page, separated by a firewall from the CME topics, where nonbranded state educational disease information from the Society’s Industry Advisory Board partners will reside.•Your Foundation is sponsoring two speakers at the Annual Conference in Chicago: the Friday plenary session presenter, and the speaker who will follow the Anne-Marie Filkin Lecture on Sunday.•No discussion of the Annual Conference is complete without mentioning the Futures Program. Again, your Foundation will be sponsoring this special “meeting within a meeting.” With your support we continue to invest in the future of PALTC through the Futures Program. The Foundation and I look forward to seeing you all in Chicago. We hope to interact with each of you at the “Wall of Caring” to unleash our inner stewardship. Dr. Lett has practiced in the PALTC continuum for more than three decades as a hands-on clinician and medical director. He has served AMDA in multiple capacities including as president, on multiple committees, and is the current chair of the Foundation for PALTC Medicine.