Communication

Abstract

As far as can be determined, the first medical organization was founded in the year 1518, when Dr Thomas Linacre, physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII, proposed and arranged the establishment of the College of Physicians (now the Royal College of Physicians). There is no recording as to differences of opinion among the membership, but it seems more than likely that complete accord and harmony did not always exist. According to the old adage, "That's what makes horseracing." Good communication (the exchange of information) can bridge most disagreements or differences of opinion. The most frequently discussed and the most important question faced by the Executive Board of the American Academy of Pediatrics has concerned the best means by which to develop and utilize communication. Examples indude the President's letter to the membership (December 1978) listing 32 AAP accomplishments and activities over the past five years; and still another is the Academy program for the International Year of the Child, "The AAP Speaks Up for Children." Communication, then, is the way to begin to solve most problems and that leads us to the theme of this discussion today: communication between practicing pediatricians and those engaged in academic pediatrics, and communication between those groups and both the Federal government and the public sector. Pediatric practitioners could not exist without pediatric teaching programs and research; conversely, the latter would be pragmatically useless without the practicing pediatricians. Both groups must recognize that they exist interdependently and that their mutual growth and development is equally interdependent.