Welcome to the team

It may be natural for you, coming from the generation of which you are part, but it was not long ago that physicians were the first and last word in patient care. Physicians worked in silos and used expressions like “in my experience” instead of “evidence shows that”. Patients knew who their doctor was and had no interest in anyone else’s opinions. There was complete trust in their attending physician. As knowledge increased at exponential rates, as medical care become more specialized, as health care took on more roles in the social constructs of insurers, as length of stay drastically shrunk in favor of post hospital care (home care, sub-acute rehab, long term care) and as we evolved to a more collaborative model teamwork replaced solo practitioners and departmental silos.

You were likely trained in a collaborative environment. You have shared educational tasks with a group of learners solving a problem. You have been part of a multidisciplinary discussion as acting interns. Perhaps you even played a role as an inter-professional care provider (scribe, therapist, EMT, nurse, physician’s assistant, etc). Now as a new member of the Lenox Hill team you are about to up your teamwork game some more.

You are now “Resident Doctors” or so says your badge buddy. That means that you are a member of the inter-professional team responsible for gathering information from or about patients to aid in the delineation of their problems, the formulation of a differential diagnosis and the construction of a diagnostic and therapeutic plan. You will work with others to care for patient’s acute problems, make sure that they have a safe and effective plan of care both in and out of the hospital and coordinate the opinions and needs of patients, families, primary teams, consultants and allied health care providers.

Beyond that you are members of the profession. You have taken an oath to practice scientifically, use humanism, learn continuously, and act ethically both with patients and outside of the patient realm.

Perhaps you have a rudimentary view of medical ethics. Perhaps you already know that these incorporate patient autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence, justice and accountability into a code of behavior. Whether you understand this or not you need to accept that your ethical duty is to promote equity in health outcomes. You cannot tolerate inequity in relation to health outcomes or social determinants of health. You must keep in mind that even the stress of a worldwide pandemic is not an excuse to allow the poor, the disenfranchised or those in the non-dominant group to be disproportionately effected by disease or the elements that determine the outcome of disease.

So it’s not just the Lenox Hill team or even the Northwell team that you are on. It is the team of health care professionals, New Yorkers, and human beings you have joined. And you can’t let your team mates down. We’re counting on you. Let’s win one for the team.