Academic medicine's core values: what do they mean?

Abstract

When I visit academic medical centers (AMCs) across the country, I not infrequently find my colleagues, especially the young people, eager to talk about academic medicine’s heritage—what it stands for, what it should embody at its deepest level. Frequently these conversations get into core values, those handful of guiding tenets that define how we live as we carry out our missions and strive to achieve our goals. The fact that more and more people today want to talk about academic medicine’s core values is both a good and a bad sign. On the one hand, it suggests that there is a lack of clarity about what our core values are and what they actually mean. When there is no rudder, there is no means of steering the ship. On the other hand, it indicates that people are looking for something more permanent, more substantive than the same old hectic pace, with its constant focus on producing more with less at almost any cost [1]. “It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race and wake up a decade later and wonder where time went,” someone recently said. Core values are the organization’s essential and enduring principles and most fundamental beliefs—they require no external justification [2]. They powerfully shape organizational culture but are not to be confused with operating practices or group norms. A core value is one we would hold even if the marketplace penalized us (financially or otherwise) for holding it. Organizations that live out their core values are more gratifying places to work. WHICH VALUES ARE MOST CORE?