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Featured topic and speakers
What do residency programs care about the most? What does AMA do for medical school? How important is advocacy in medical education? Why is health care advocacy important?
Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, chair of the AMA Board of Trustees, discusses the vital role of health care advocacy for medical students and residents, and how involvement in organized medicine can enhance a candidate's residency application and contribute to their development as a physician leader. AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger hosts.
- The AMA is your powerful ally, focused on addressing the issues important to you, so you can focus on what matters most—patients. We will meet this challenge together. Join us.
- AMA Medical Student Section (MSS).
- Visit for leadership programs for medical students.
- How the AMA helps medical students become better physicians.
- Learn more about our AMA advocacy priorities, including:
- Reforming Medicare payment
- Fighting scope creep
- Fixing prior authorization
- Reducing physician burnout
- Making technology work for physicians
Speaker
- Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, chair, AMA Board of Trustees
Transcript
Unger: Hello and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast. Health care advocacy plays a vital role in shaping the future of medicine. But today, we're talking about what program directors and students need to know about how it also shapes leaders in medicine.
Our guest today is Dr. Michael Suk, chair of the AMA Board of Trustees and an orthopedic surgeon at Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer in Chicago. Dr. Suk, it's nice to have you back.
Dr. Suk: Thanks, Todd. Always great to be with you, and especially here to talk about a pretty important thing that's near and dear to my heart is how the AMA intersects with the lives and experiences of medical students and residents.
Unger: Dr. Suk, you're the chair of the AMA Board of Trustees today. But you got your start in advocacy as a medical student, and you've been involved ever since. How did that experience shape your time in medical school and why would you encourage students to get involved early?
Dr. Suk: You know, it's interesting, Todd, looking back. And I'm almost afraid to say how long ago it was. But decades ago, when I started my first day of medical school, I really remember not only being intimidated by the whole process and the idea of actually becoming a physician.
But one of the things that, I think, struck me immediately was the welcoming nature of folks who were in my local AMA chapter, who really, I think, from day one, encouraged me to continue to embrace this idea that one day I would be a physician and that—but part of being a physician was to not only advocate for our patients, but also for medicine as a whole.
And so I remember joining the AMA day one as a medical student. I think one of the most interesting things about that was this idea that I could get JAMA and feel like I was reading scientific articles and would enhance my education and really make me feel closer, I think, to really just what I think the profession was all about.
Slowly I began to realize that the AMA wasn't just about JAMA. It wasn't necessarily about the things that I were learning to become a physician clinically. But also, what it exposed me to were the larger issues around practicing medicine as a whole. And I rapidly caught the bug, as many would say, and felt that the role of advocacy was really not only part of my own personal journey but should be part of the professional journey of anybody who's going to become a physician and study to become a physician one day.
And so that's really where my start was. And so decades ago and now decades later, I continue to have this optimism about our profession. I still think it's the greatest profession on earth. We get to take care of patients. We get to think broadly about clinical issues and solve problems.
But more importantly, we also get to address the larger-picture items and issues that are at hand that actually affect our day-to-day practice and our ability to care for those patients. And I think somebody has to stand up in this professional realm, not just for other physicians but also for patients and our ability to take care of them.
Unger: Absolutely. Now, going back again, thinking back to medical school and what you were worried about, what we hear today from many students out there is they're looking forward to that residency process and making sure that they distinguish themselves as candidates. How do you see involvement in a state or specialty society or the AMA figuring in to help candidates stand out?
Dr. Suk: You know, Todd, as you also know, I'm also a former program director. I currently, in my role as a chair of a large, multidisciplinary musculoskeletal institute, have the ability to see and educate and train physicians from multiple different specialties. To date, there are over 60 residents and fellows that are directly under my purview. And I get the unique opportunity to see them as they come in as applicants, and I get to see them as they grow into becoming fully trained physicians.
And I'll say one consistent theme that I see across the board is that those who, I believe, see a picture beyond just their individual lives and role as a physician, I think, consistently do the best in our programs. I think people who come in with a sense that there's something bigger than just an individual patient at a time, but the larger context and want to play a role—I think that translates into their critical problem-solving skills.
That translates into their ability to be great team members. And ultimately, it translates into their ability to become great leaders, not just within their own program, but also, as I've seen graduates leave and go into their own practices, become really great leaders in their professions and in their practice groups and practice settings.
So the one thing that I attribute to all of that is partly their role in being part of things like organized medicine. And when I see residents or candidates come through, have evidenced that they've taken part in something bigger than just becoming a great student who's done great on an exam, I have great confidence that they're going to become great physicians, great physician leaders. And those are the ones that I'm particularly attracted to and want to train. I think organized medicine, whether it's a state specialty or the AMA, any of those experiences are great evidence that they're going to become great leaders one day.
Unger: Absolutely. That's a really interesting observation. And you mentioned you were a former residency program director. I'm curious, you've reviewed a lot of applications. Do you have any advice for medical students on how to best showcase their advocacy work in their application?
Dr. Suk: Yeah. Yeah, I think that the key components to being a great resident and ultimately someone that people want to train is the ability to showcase the fact that you've started something, and you saw it to completion or that you're passionate about something and that you want to continue that passion beyond being just a great clinician.
Foundationally, I would say, absolutely. If you're going into a residency, you've got to be a great physician. You've got to be a great specialist and you've got to take great care of patients. But beyond that, I think the passion that you can bring on issues that, whether they're social, political or advocacy-related, I think demonstrate a greater 360 view of who you are. Don't be afraid to showcase these things.
There are going to be times when people you speak to won't understand why you're spending time doing these things. But again, finding that way to articulate those issues, why you're passionate about certain things, are really just evidence about how you're going to be passionate about your patients. And for me, I think these are great signals that you can showcase when you apply for residency programs.
Unger: Well, on the flip side, what's your message to program directors, like you were once, about candidates who have been involved in advocacy work? Can it be used as a predictor of success, kind of like what your experience has told you?
Dr. Suk: Yeah, 100%. And I think that my message to program directors would be this. Don't get caught so much up in who people are advocating for or what organization they specifically are tied to because we all have our own internal biases about whether or not—if I'm an orthopedic surgeon, and I've got a candidate who is involved with the neurosurgical society, I don't take a preconceived bias against neurosurgeons. But I look at the fact that they took something, and they became passionate about it. And they went and took it to the conclusion or to the end.
I would say worry less about the organization they're advocating for. But the fact that they stepped up, they took an issue or they took a social construct, and they decided to take a stand I think is really the most important part. The AMA tends to be one of those great places where people with passion can co-locate, but again, I think it's one of many. And I think I would just say to program directors, look at those aspects beyond their grades, their scores on an exam, their ability to participate in activities that demonstrate leadership.
Another way to say this is, in orthopedics, we get a tremendous number of applicants that come through that have been former athletes that have been great, whether they're individual sports or team sports. We place a great emphasis on that because it's an indicator of how they'll be as a resident. I put advocacy and activity within advocacy in the same category as somebody who has played high-level collegiate sports. It's the same indicator for success that I would say is any of these other things that are more traditional. And so I would encourage program directors to look at that and really expand their thinking about, what are the other elements that make residents ultimately great physicians?
Unger: I love that. Advocacy truly is a team sport in so many ways. I'm curious, Dr. Suk. You started early as a medical student in the AMA. Did you think at that point you would ever be chair of the AMA Board of Trustees?
Dr. Suk: No. I remember sitting and standing in awe of these people who were leading this association that I'm grateful and certainly honored to lead today, thinking that the pathway to get there seemed very daunting. But I think that where I found success is really being true to who I am and what I believe and why I think the larger picture of medicine is part of our individual responsibility.
And I've been greatly rewarded for that certainly within my organized medicine career. But no, I didn't join the AMA with an idea that I would have some political title or anything like that. I think that's been a nice offshoot for the fact that I'm just passionate about what we do and how I truly believe that American medicine is still the best in the world.
Unger: Anything in particular stand out about what you learned over the course of your AMA tenure? Any one important lesson you'd pass on to a medical student?
Dr. Suk: Yeah, I would say that one of the great things about recognizing leadership are people who are willing to step up. And this is a blessing and a curse is that one of perhaps my greatest faults is the fact I have a hard time saying no. But when you're willing to step up, you will find opportunity, and people will find you. And then if you can then take some of the passion that you have and take it to conclusion, it's very easy to be recognized and to find success in the things that you want to do.
This, I would say, applies to things outside of just advocacy. It applies to all the clinical work that you're going to do as a future resident and as a future physician. And you'll find that when you're ready to step up, and you're willing to step up, leadership opportunities will just fall into your lap because we look for volunteers. We look for people with passion. And I think those are the ones who are most successful in our profession.
Unger: Just following up on that, what do you think your career would look like without those kind of leadership opportunities that you've held along the way in organized medicine?
Dr. Suk: Yeah, I think that without those opportunities, I probably would have found some other opportunities in different ways because that's part of what drives me. But I'm really grateful and thankful that the AMA helped provide those things. I mean, very few organizations within the world of medicine offer you such exposure to leadership, to different ways of critical thinking, to networking with people of all walks of life in different specialties at such a young age.
I mean, in your 20s, you're starting medical school. And you're rubbing elbows, and you're talking to people who are the presidents of different societies that you might be professionally interested in with people of very different ways of thinking and doing it in a way that is professional, honorable and with a sense that we can completely disagree on something. But when we walk out of the room together, we're going to agree that this is a pathway forward for the profession.
Students, I think, play such a critical role in making sure that we stay true to what we will be—what we will see as the future. I remember decades ago, when I was a first-year medical student, thinking that people who are practicing today are not necessarily the way I would practice 30 years from now. And that's ultimately true. But at the end of the day, it still remains an amazing profession for us to be in.
Unger: Dr. Suk, thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many opportunities at the AMA and elsewhere. And it's really inspiring to hear stories like yours. I know you're a great inspiration to me and everybody who's around you.
If you'd like to get involved in the AMA, we encourage you to become a member at ama-assn.org/join to get started. That wraps up today's episode and we'll be back soon with another AMA Update. Be sure to subscribe for new episodes and find all our videos and podcasts at ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Please take care.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.
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