THI Cardiology Honors Ceremony: We Wish You Godspeed

In a talk to graduating medical students at Bellevue Hospital in New York City in 1871, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Medicine is the most difficult of sciences and most laborious of arts. It will ask all your powers of mind and body if you are faithful to it. The great practitioners are generally those who concentrate all their powers on their business. If here and there, there are brilliant exceptions, it is only by virtue of extraordinary gifts and industry to which very few are equal.” Thirty years later, Sir William Osler told medical students at the University of Toronto that the “Master Word” in medicine is work: “A little one, but fraught with momentous consequences, if you can but write it on the tablets of your hearts and bind it upon your foreheads.” Later generations of medical educators and students internalized these values to the extent that, by the 1960s, a major teaching hospital could aptly be described as a “workaholic's idea of heaven.” Each of you cardiology fellows has been immersed in truly excellent training in cardiovascular medicine and surgery, anesthesiology, and pathology. You have helped in the care of countless patients with cardiovascular disease, and you have learned from some of the most talented cardiovascular specialists in the world today. Your mentors are confident that your training has prepared you for an independent career, and we are hopeful of learning of the many contributions that each of you will make as physicians and teachers, as your careers develop. I hope that we will hear of your discoveries in the struggle against cardiovascular disease. As you leave us now, please remember that tonight is not the end of anything. It is the beginning of terrific new opportunities and new responsibilities to help people, often desperately ill with cardiovascular disease. In confronting those new opportunities, travel with Dr. Cooley's admonition that “The day is finished when the work is done”—and he means well done, in behalf of the patients who have entrusted you with their futures. It will remain important to always serve with compassion, to be readily available, and to constantly update your talents in your specialties. Dream big, work hard, and expect good things to happen. Be mindful of the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Far greater is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Your mentors have three additional suggestions for you tonight: First, prepare to meet the personal demands of patient care. Some of these demands and your reactions to them are not predictable. Patient needs often occur unexpectedly, intruding on an already busy schedule and in the midst of your commitments to others, including family members. They often occur when you are exhausted. But always put the patient first. His or her needs, whether emergent or not, must come first. Second, you will find that “politics” impinge on everything that you do in medicine. Politics include disagreements among professional partners, jealousies among physicians' groups and hospitals, and the striving for personal advancement, often at the expense of others. Churchill reminded us that “These kinds of politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war, you can be killed only once, but in politics, many times.” My advice is to ignore politics at this level. DO your best, BE your best, FOCUS on the right things, and, as my friend Bud Frazier says frequently, “Take the high road and leave the rest to the others.” Third, we ask that you always represent the Texas Heart Institute well. You have been well trained, and the talents and capabilities that you have gained should be immediately evident as you practice your art. But you will also serve both yourselves and the Texas Heart Institute well if you are known as a caring, communicative, and compassionate physician. Return to visit us and support the Texas Heart Institute, your professional home. Figure. Fellows upon Completion of Cardiology Training, 30 June 2013. Front row, left to right: Christopher Higgins, Federico Azpurua, Sreedevi Gondi, Kumar Satya, and Mauricio Obon-Dent. Back row, left to right: Farshad Raissi and Mihail Chelu. We are optimistic about your futures. Expect to find us here, as today, wholly engaged in the endeavors of patient care, education, discovery, and the translation of those discoveries into improved patient care. As you go forward, we wish to hear of you and your accomplishments. Please share them with us as often as you can. You leave us as part of our professional family—with our optimism, respect, affection, and all our best wishes. Our parting wish is that you heed Einstein's advice to his son, on morality: “Take little for yourself, give much to others.” We are very proud of each of you and wish you GODSPEED. James T. Willerson, MD President and Medical Director, Texas Heart Institute; and Editor-in-Chief, Texas Heart Institute Journal

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