Why am I here?

Abstract

There are many important issues that constantly surround us, issues that we confront every day and night as we care for the injured. Most cannot be adequately addressed in a few minutes because of their scope and influence on our professional lives and the lives of our patients. None, however, are unimportant. Allow me to list a few of these: ● Solving the problem of alcohol as a trauma potentiator ● The importance of rehabilitation as the final pathway for our patients ● Profitability in trauma: how are we going to do more with less? ● Recognizing the importance of spirituality to us and our patients However, following the advice of one of my good friends and predecessors in EAST, I have decided to play from my strengths in this address. I will speak to you today as a surgical specialist, one who began his surgical career and training as a general surgery resident with an interest in trauma, and one who has been most fortunate to be asked by his colleagues to serve in various positions in this organization. In so doing, I hope to provide for you an answer to a simple question I have often posed for myself: ● Why am I here? I am sure many of you have been asking yourselves this same question. In fact, I have had some members come right up to me and ask me just how in the hell is it that I have come to be president of EAST? But because I hold this organization and this office in such great esteem, I have been thinking critically about this. Each morning and night when I sit at my desk at home with the EAST gavel in front of me, I am reminded that as a surgical specialist, my roots, like those of my specialty of plastic surgery, are in trauma. Furthermore, this may well be the reason that I am where I am today. It is not by a mistake or mere providence that we come to the positions we occupy in our professional and personal lives. We must all discern why we are where we are. In my case, I feel that there is something I have to contribute, and I must figure out what that is and thereby answer this question: why am I here? In my professional life, I frequently find myself wearing two hats, that of a plastic surgeon and that of a plastic surgical traumatologist. Perhaps a better metaphor would be to say that I often stand with one foot in the boat of trauma and one foot on the dock of plastic surgery. Generally, all seems well until the dock moves relative to the boat, or the boat begins to sail away from the dock. Either could produce a certain amount of personal discomfort. Fortunately, I have not yet had to jump onto to the dock or into the boat, and it is my intention not to do so. However curious I might find my position to be, it is clear to me that I should examine the important interdependence of trauma and the surgical specialist as we deliver care to our injured patients. To do this, I would like to address several questions: ● Is trauma care important to the surgical specialist? ● Are the surgical specialists important to trauma? ● What problems exist that may threaten our interdependence, and how do we solve them?