Leading Beyond the OR: Lessons from U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams

Technical excellence has always been central to anesthesiology. Increasingly, however, the future of the specialty will depend on something equally important: leadership, communication, and the ability to build trust.

In this episode of PDs at SEA, Dr. Marianne Chen welcomes former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams for a wide-ranging conversation about what anesthesiology educators should be teaching beyond clinical knowledge. Drawing on his experience as a practicing anesthesiologist, state health commissioner, U.S. Surgeon General, and current Director of Purdue University’s Center for Health Equity, Dr. Adams reflects on how trust shapes patient care, public health, and the future of medicine. 

The discussion explores why communication deserves to be taught with the same rigor as procedural skills, how advocacy should begin with the needs of patients rather than the profession, and why leadership training can no longer be viewed as optional for physicians. Dr. Adams also shares practical ideas for incorporating communication, systems thinking, artificial intelligence, and leadership development into residency education while encouraging educators to identify and cultivate future physician leaders.  

The conversation concludes with reflections on mentorship, service, and the importance of saying “yes” to opportunities early in one’s career. Throughout, Dr. Adams offers a compelling vision of anesthesiologists as clinicians, educators, advocates, and trusted leaders capable of improving not only individual patient encounters but the healthcare system itself. 

Key Takeaways From This Episode

• Trust is one of the most important determinants of effective patient care and public health.
• Communication should be taught, practiced, and assessed with the same intentionality as procedural skills.
• Advocacy is most effective when it begins with patients’ interests rather than physicians’ interests.
• Leadership, systems thinking, and health policy should become core components of anesthesiology training.
• Artificial intelligence will change anesthesiology, making adaptability and critical evaluation essential skills.
• Early involvement in organized medicine and advocacy creates opportunities for future leadership.
• Mentorship shapes careers by helping learners recognize possibilities they cannot yet see in themselves.

Especially Useful For

Program directors, associate program directors, clerkship directors, faculty educators, residents interested in leadership and advocacy, department chairs, and anyone interested in preparing anesthesiologists to lead both inside and beyond the operating room.

Related Episodes

• Early Exposure, Better Advice: Medical Student Education and the Future of Anesthesiology
• Everything You Wanted to Know About Being a Program Director
• Global Health Opportunities in Anesthesia

Transcript

Marianne Chen, MD 0:11

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the next episode of PDs at Sea. We are so honored today to be joined by Dr. Jerome Adams, and we'll let him first introduce himself and then we'll get started in a deeper conversation. Dr. Adams, thank you so much for being here. Please share a little bit about who you are, how you got here, and anything else you'd like to share with us.

Jerome Adams, MD 0:33

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to people who are interested in health, in public health, and in anesthesia. And I have a trajectory, a history, a career that has uh spanned all of those areas. Let me start off by telling you about what I'm doing right now. I am still practicing anesthesia one day a week at a level one trauma center at uh Eskenazi Health in downtown Indianapolis, where I have residents, medical students, CRNAs, AAs, all of whom I work with. And uh the other four days a week, I am at Purdue University, where I uh am the director of our Center for Health Equity. And in that role, I work with undergraduate, PhD graduate students, and uh faculty to try to uh enable broader policy change in the area of uh health and health equity, um, and also help train those folks. And I think that's important for us to understand that health care, as we're taught it, is a single patient encounter. And it uh is often very focused on a uh a person, an institution, uh, a moment, a set of symptoms. But health is so much more than that. Health happens out in your community, it's transportation, it's it's housing, it's infrastructure, it's environmental pollutants, it's what we eat, it's trust. And those are all the things that I lean into at Purdue University. But uh, I don't want to take up too much time giving you my background. I also am a father of three, and uh I feel that's actually very relevant because one of the challenges we often have in our professional careers is trying to figure out how to balance uh those careers with our personal lives. And you see that tension now, and we talked a lot about that at SEA, uh, that tension between the new era of trainees and younger or earlier career anesthesiologists and anesthetists who have very different priorities and expectations regarding work-life balance than what um older anesthesiologists or later career folks have had. So uh I really try to talk about and think about how to balance or integrate those two worlds. And um, before that, very quick version of my story of how I became Surgeon General, I got involved in organized medicine and advocacy early on in my career. When I was in medical school, I got involved in the AMA medical student section and uh went to the meetings, fell in love with the idea that you could advocate for a policy as a student, and um it could become national policy for your organization and in turn national policy for the country. Many people are not aware that the reason we don't have smoking on planes now is because of a resolution that was passed at the American Medical Association Student Section. One of the main reasons we have work hour restrictions for residents and medical students is because of resolutions that were passed by the AMA medical student and resident fellow sections. And so fell in love with advocacy, got to meet legislators, including at the time, then Congressman Mike Pence. Congressman Mike Pence eventually became Indiana Governor Mike Pence and needed someone to run his State Department of Health. And uh at that time, I was on my state medical association board of trustees and the board of directors for uh the Indiana Society of Anesthesiologists. And those two roles uh put me in a position to have had familiarity with the governor and um and his people and to have credibility um with them. And so I became uh Mike Pence's state health commissioner, essentially the Surgeon General of Indiana. And uh then Governor Mike Pence became uh Vice President Mike Pence, and my name got thrown into the hat to be Surgeon General of the United States. So that's a really abbreviated version of what I'm doing right now, my life story and my professional career story.

Marianne Chen, MD 4:49

Great, thank you so much. We're hoping that a lot of the questions that we have coming up will touch on a lot of the points that you made in your intro. So, first, thank you so much for the presentation and talk you gave at the annual SEA meeting. It was definitely a highlight of our meeting. Before we delve into the themes that stood out from your talk, such as the importance of effective communication and patient advocacy on our part as anesthesiologists, can you give us a flavor of the experiences you've had in your role as Surgeon General and your current role at Purdue that led you to particularly focus on the importance of these issues at your talk?

Speaker 1 5:25

Yeah, great question. And one of the most important lessons that I feel I learned as State Health Commissioner and as Surgeon General of the United States is that having the right science is not enough. It seems simple, but it's incredibly important because we go through years, decades of schooling and training so that we learn the science, so that we learn what's in the textbook. And we think that once we've mastered that, then we will be able to go out and instantly translate it into healthier people and healthier communities. But the problem is that all of that behavior change that you're expecting is predicated on trust. If people don't trust you, uh they won't hear you. And if they uh don't hear you, they won't act on your recommendations. Uh uh to put it in a quote that I gave at the meeting, people need to know that you care before they care what you know. And so what struck me was that the communities that I saw that had the best outcomes often weren't the ones with the most resources. They were the ones that had trusted relationships between policymakers and citizens, between the doctors or nurses or health professionals in their community and the people who they were blessed to take care of. And since leaving office as Surgeon General, I've come to believe even more strongly that declining trust is one of our greatest threats to health care today. I say it's our greatest public health crisis because trust affects whether patients seek care, whether they follow recommendations, whether they accept treatments, and whether they engage with healthcare systems. So to land the plane here, communication and advocacy are really trust-building tools. They're how we translate our knowledge into action and policies, and our action and policies ultimately into outcomes, which is what we really care about.

Marianne Chen, MD 7:21

Yes, so important. We as program directors and other leaders in anesthesia education provide mentorship in many domains to trainees who represent the future of our profession. Advocacy is an area of interest, a passion that many of us hear about from applicants during the interview season. And there's lots of work being done in different states in our ASA to really promote more opportunities within advocacy. But when we talk about this advocacy, we really think about advocacy for our profession, while applicants to residency usually bring an interest in advocacy for patients. So, what do you see as the role for us as anesthesiologists in advocate, advocating for our patients? Are we emphasizing this enough through our collective professional voices?

Speaker 1 8:07

Well, this is something that I am passionate about. I think being an anesthesiologist is a uh tremendous responsibility, but also a tremendous opportunity. It's an opportunity to expand our identity as patient advocates. Patients meet us shortly before surgery and uh may never fully appreciate the breath of what we do, yet we're uniquely positioned at critical moments in patients' lives, when they are vulnerable, when they're anxious, in many cases forced to place extraordinary trust in uh the healthcare system. I think about putting in an epidural when someone is about to have a baby. I think about being in the ICU when someone's loved one is about to be intubated. I think about pediatric anesthesia and literally taking the most important thing in someone's lives from their hands and walking away, knowing that that the difference between whether they see their loved one again or not is you and uh in your actions. Uh so patient advocacy can mean helping a patient understand their options before surgery. I think that is incredibly important, especially in this era of informed consent. And uh, I know folks can't see me, but I'm doing air quotes here. I think that uh phrase has been abused, but it's certainly created an opportunity to talk about what informed consent is or is not, whether it's talking about regional anesthesia or uh or vaccines, advocacy can mean improving uh pain management while reducing opioid-related harms. That's something I leaned into as Surgeon General prior to the pandemic because we knew that uh our epidemic at that time, our pandemic at that time, was one of opioid overdose deaths. And who better than an anesthesiologist who knows how powerful fentanyl and c fentanyl are, who has given naloxone to people and seen that you can literally bring someone back from the dead uh with naloxone. It can mean ensuring equitable access to safe anesthesia services and rural or underserved communities, something that, again, as a professional society, we frequently uh talk about. But here's the thing: it can also mean speaking up about broader issues that affect outcomes. Not again, those individual patient one-on-one patient encounters, but maternal mortality, uh, access to surgical care, health literacy, behavioral health, substance use disorders, even vaccine hesitancy. You're in the ICU and we're about to innovate or about to extubate grandma, and it's the middle of winter and there's a flu outbreak. It's the perfect time to say, ask the family, did you get your flu vaccine? And uh if they say no, to ask them why or why not, and to help them understand uh we just did all this so that grandma could uh could hopefully um go on to lead a much longer and safer life. And the last thing you want to do is be the one who uh brings in a preventable flu to grandma that's gonna uh cause her to go in the wrong direction. So I think we could do more as a profession to elevate the uh patient-centered advocacy efforts and the uh public or societal uh advocacy efforts. But I do have to give ASA a shout out here. One of the things that I have loved about being involved with the ASA is that no matter what you're talking about, whether it's research or whether it's education or whether it's the humanitarian efforts that ASA has leaned into, uh they really all are about advocating. You know, that brings us back to the public uh being most likely to trust us when they see that our primary focus is improving their health and well-being as opposed to improving our own well-being and um financial outcomes.

Marianne Chen, MD 12:01

Absolutely. And and speaking of the ASA, they've done a great amount of work on different issues such as the No Surprises Act, the and looking at anesthesia care team models, which are no doubt critical issues that impact our patients. Um, you speak about emphasizing communication and trust. What would be your message to our profession and our residents and trainees to regain public trust by showing more concern for them, by better focusing on advocacy issues that more directly involve improving outcomes and access for our patients?

Speaker 1 12:35

Well, this is key here, and this is something where I'm gonna I'm gonna give uh a little tough love to my colleagues out there. I've I've been involved with the ASA and the AMA my entire professional careers. Um I love both organizations, I support both organizations, but I also want to say honestly that um too often we fall into a framing or a narrative that is about us and not about the patient. And this is some hard medicine for folks to swallow, but no one's ever gonna feel sorry for us as anesthesiologists. We're frequently on the list of best professions, highest paid professions at any rate. And no one is gonna feel bad about our pay being cut. No one is gonna feel bad about us having to work harder for the big houses and the nice cars that they um perceive us as driving. And the bottom line is my advice to my colleagues is simple. Start where the patient is and not where you are. Um, too often healthcare entities and advocates begin their efforts by explaining why a policy matters to physicians or to the hospital. Whereas the public is asking a different question. They're asking, how does this affect me, my family, my community? So when discussing workforce issues or access issues or care models, we need to always begin by explaining the implications for patient safety, for quality, for continuity, and for outcomes. Well, people don't object to physicians advocating. They expect us to advocate, but they want to know that our advocacy is rooted in their interests and not ours. So the most effective message is not this is important for anesthesiologists. The most important message, the most effective message is this is how we can help patients receive safer, higher quality, more accessible care. If we consistently lead with patience, then trust tends to follow. And ultimately, we as anesthesiologists and professionals, when we have that trust, will be able to better advocate for the issues that care for us. And we won't even have to advocate for those issues because our patients will advocate for them on our behalf because they trust us and believe that what's good for us is good for them.

Marianne Chen, MD 14:55

I love that everything goes back to the patient and following up with them and their needs and really focusing on that. You talk about communication, and we all know as program directors that it's one of our ACG Me core competencies that we are trying to make sure that our residents are skilled in as they go through residency training. We were all very impressed by your insight and skill that you have developed in this domain. How should program directors better integrate the lessons you have learned into teaching and modeling communication to our resident trainees?

Speaker 1 15:27

Well, again, some tough medicine here for us. It is a core competency, and that is absolutely a positive step in the right direction, but we do not treat it with the same level of respect, scrutiny, attention, funding that we do for other core competencies. I think we need to treat communication with the same seriousness and investment that we treat procedural competence. We have um simulators for all sorts of procedures, but how many uh simulators uh or opportunities do we have to teach communication? We would never assume residents become technically proficient simply by observing others put in an IV or innovate or do regional blocks. We provide instruction, coaching, feedback, simulation, opportunities, you know, opportunities to do it in real time, and then assessment. And communication, in my opinion, deserves the exact same approach. Residents need to learn and be in it to learn, they need to be taught to explain risk and uncertainty. That is important. They should learn how to navigate difficult conversations, address misinformation. That's incredibly important in this day and age. Uh, too often we shy away from having those conversations. We need to learn how to deliver bad news. We need to uh learn and teach how to communicate across cultural differences and to build trust in high pressure situations. Equally important, our faculty must model and must be judged on their modeling of these behaviors. Uh, trainees learn far more from what they observe than from what they hear in a lecture. It can't be do as I say and not as I do. The future leaders of healthcare, quite frankly, are going to be those people who can communicate complex information clearly, compassionately, and credibly. And I'll finish here by reminding folks what we've seen from the ASA closed claims database. And that is that the clinicians who are the best proceduralists aren't the ones who were sued the least. It is the physicians who are the best communicators who are sued the least because there is an underlying trust there, such that even if you do make an honest mistake, people will give you the benefit of the doubt. But you can be the best clinician in the world if you're a terrible communicator, um, people aren't going to trust you, they aren't going to believe you, they aren't going to give you the benefit of the doubt. So not only is it important for our patients, but it's actually important for our livelihoods to be better at teaching communication to trainees.

Marianne Chen, MD 18:12

Absolutely. And I I love all the things you're saying. And I also wonder can we kind of target this during medical school before they even start residency training and have some of those experiences, teaching, modeling that you speak of? Um not even medical school.

Speaker 1 18:27

I mean, we have to get as far upstream as possible and think about, again, the the opportunity. So ACGME is great, but can we move back to should some sort of communications assessment be on the MCATS? One of the things that that I have had the opportunity to do that I encourage anyone, if you have the opportunity to take advantage of it, is to be part of the American Board of Uh of Anesthesia. And uh why? Because it is an opportunity for you to understand, better understand the array of practice patterns around the country, which in many uh cases are rooted in regional cultures, expectations, beliefs. So it gives you an appreciation for that. But how it relates to this conversation is that I love how how much better the ABA has been about incorporating new research and new priorities, such as around the importance of diversity um training in our programs, um, such as around the opioid um epidemic into the board questions that are asked. And so we have opportunities every time we assess someone in their pathway to becoming an anesthesiologist, going all the way back to uh to the MCATs or even beyond, you know, upstream of that. Um going and talking to high schoolers and middle schoolers. I encourage programs to do that and to think about allowing their residents to do that to help them understand that that no, we aren't just the people behind the curtain who uh never say anything and who are reading newspapers. We are experts, quite frankly, in communication because we have to be in order to communicate with surgeons, nurses, techs, patients, family members, and then more broadly, uh folks in policy positions.

Marianne Chen, MD 20:22

Yeah, absolutely. And the the ABA has actually done a great job in including some of those communication skills in their assessments for the applied exam to be board-certified anesthesiologists, which has been great to see. My next question for educators that are listening to this podcast, in this changing economic, technologic, and political landscape, what should we be teaching the anesthesiologists of tomorrow that we are not currently emphasizing?

Speaker 1 20:46

Well, a couple of things stand out. I'd say first, leadership. I think every physician leads whether or not they hold a formal title. And we have become more and more knowledgeable about the skill sets, the tools that it takes to be an effective leader. Things such as understanding yourself and your personality and uh what type of style you have, and understanding that not everyone's gonna have that same sort of style. So you may say something and it may not be received in the uh the manner that that you intend. Uh, many folks have heard of disc training. Uh, this is one example of teaching people how to be better and more effective leaders. So I think that is important that we have to teach leadership intentionally because whether they like it or not, um, they're all going to be leading in some way, shape, or form when they get out. So shame on us if we don't prepare them for it. Second, I think we need to be teaching more about systems level thinking. Healthcare outcomes are increasingly shaped by factors outside the operating room. So physicians need to understand policy, payment systems, quality. Quality improvement, population health, and healthcare delivery. I often say to residents, and I don't mean this to be cynical, I mean this to open their eyes, that you spend most of your medical school and residency learning the gold standard way how to do things. And then you go out into practice and you spend your first several years of practice learning all the reasons why you're not able to deliver the gold standard of care to your patients. And that is because of the systems in which we operate in. W. Edwards Demming says a bad system will beat a good person every time. He also says every system is perfectly designed to deliver the results that it does, meaning nothing happens by accident. And so if we can teach systems-level thinking and we can teach leadership, then we can teach our trainees to come out and be the types of physicians who change those broader systems, even as they're dealing with the problems immediately in front of them. And then finally, because you mentioned technology, I think we need to be intentionally talking more about artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. And every single residency program needs to have at least one lecture, I think, every year for their trainees in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. I don't think AI is going to replace anesthesiologists, but anesthesiologists who know how to use AI effectively are going to replace those who do not. So we need physicians who can critically evaluate these tools, both the pros and the cons, while preserving the human elements of care. And above all, tying us all together, I think we need to teach adaptability. The pace of change in healthcare has never been faster. I will tell you that early in my career, they were teaching anesthesia. 90% of anesthesia was the same anesthesia you would have been taught 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, even beyond that. Now things are turning over so rapidly that you have to be adaptable. And I think that is another skill that we can prepare folks for so they don't go out in the world thinking things are going to be static and then they're shocked when the ground shifts underneath them.

Marianne Chen, MD 24:09

Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any practical tips to share about how to implement teaching on leadership and healthcare systems within a residency program training?

Speaker 1 24:20

Yeah, great question. I would say, first of all, we need to make sure we're identifying and recognizing folks who are in leadership positions. So multiple institutions. You have anesthesiologists who are on the Med Exec Committee, anesthesiologists who are in hospital administration, anesthesiologists who were doing things outside the hospital. And we need to recognize that. I'll be honest with you, I struggled throughout a lot of my career to quite frankly get permission, to get coverage, to get support from my program for being involved in organized medicine and advocacy, for being the Indiana State Health Commissioner, and so for being Surgeon General. And so if our residents and trainees don't see us valuing our colleagues and recognizing and valuing our colleagues who are in leadership positions, then they're not going to value it or want to pursue those roles either. But also, those folks are great mentors. We need them to come in and give lectures. Again, just as we give lectures on Swans Gans catheters and regional anesthesia procedures, we need those folks to come in and talk about their experiences during grand rounds presentations during, again, CA year appropriate lectures. So I think that's important. And then finally, recognizing that there are specific skills. I would love to see a residency program have their CA1s or maybe their CA twos or CA threes. You could do it at any year. I think it could fit in at any point, but maybe CA3 year is more appropriate because they're getting ready to go out to do disk training for their for their residents. Because I've done it multiple times. And it's just amazing the insights it provides into uh, again, who you are, what you value, how you think, but also recognizing how your colleagues may think differently. And we may not, we we don't see those types of skills or training as part of our job as uh anesthesia uh faculty. But uh, I would argue that they should be because uh we will create better physicians and ultimately a a better specialty if we're training people in this in this way.

Marianne Chen, MD 26:33

So true. I love that. Um, one would not choose to serve in the ways you have if you do not have a sense of hope for the future of medicine in our profession in particular. Um for our trainees who will become the anesthesiologist tomorrow, what gives you a sense of hope for the future of healthcare?

Speaker 1 26:49

Well, some people ask me, why do you still practice anesthesia? A, I love it. I I love that immediate um feedback that I get from patient care. Even as I'm working to change the system more broadly, I still love that immediate feedback. But I also love, I love working with residents, with medical students, with trainees. And you say what gives me hope, what gives me hope are those people is the next generation. Uh I meet uh students, residents, young physicians across the country who are extraordinarily talented, who are incredibly mission-driven, who are eager to improve healthcare. They're comfortable working across disciplines. They think differently than people like me about technology. They understand the importance of health equity, of communication, and of patient-centered care. And beyond the next generation, I'm also encouraged by scientific advances that would have seemed unimaginable just a decade ago. AI-assisted diagnostics, precision medicine, gene therapies, new approaches to chronic disease management. Even in our lifetime, to make it real for folks, the difficult airway algorithm is completely different now because of video laryngoscopy. I don't want to age myself, but you know, the scariest thing about your day is someone coming in who was a grade four uh previously. Now we don't even think twice about that because of because of video laryngoscopy. Ultrasound guided blocks, one of the hardest things to do 25, 30 years ago when I first started training. One of the most highly skilled techniques that we engaged in now has become a lot more accessible because of ultrasound, a lot safer to do. And so that's just you know, technologies and advancements that have happened in our lifetime. So Gamadex, just amazing how that's changed neuromuscular uh uh reversal. And so I think AI assisted diagnostics, again, precision medicine, gene therapies are gonna drastically and rapidly change healthcare. And I think it's gonna need to because we know that our system overall is failing. It's too high cost, there are still too many um uh safety issues that arise. But I'm encouraged by the era that we're in. The challenge, uh, quite frankly, is ensuring that these innovations are deployed in ways that are equitable and that improve trust and access rather than widening existing gaps and lowering trust. And so uh there's another saying nothing about us without us. We need to make sure we're constantly talking to patients, communities about the use of these technologies uh so that uh uh and how it's assisting anesthesia and and uh helping us provide better, cheaper, more accessible care so that they have that buy-in. If we combine technological innovation with human connection, I am incredibly hopeful that the future of healthcare is going to be incredibly bright.

Marianne Chen, MD 29:53

I love all that. I'm sure we have trainees who are listening who would like to follow in your footsteps and have a career in public health and health policy. How should they get involved now early in their careers? What advice would you give them?

Speaker 1 30:06

A couple of things I would say is that you just have to find number one, where your interest lies. For some people, it's research, and FAIR is a great way to lean into research. So if you don't know about FAI or aren't involved with it, get involved with it. For other people, it's advocacy. Going to the AMA or your state medical association meetings, that that route is great. You can also get involved with clinical care. I was on the ASA Regional Anesthesia Committee because um I loved uh that aspect of clinical care. But the bottom line is you don't need a title to begin making a difference. So don't wait. Start by serving on a hospital committee or as a resident. You can get on their spots on the ASA committees, participating in AMA, ASA, National Medical Association, other entities, joining advocacy days at the state or national level or engaging with community organizations. You need to learn how healthcare policy is actually made, how the sausage is made. Understand how payment systems influence care and develop skills in communication and coalition building. And or most importantly, stay grounded in patient care. The best health policy leaders remain connected to the people affected by the decisions they help make. So back to where we started, make sure everything you do is framed through the lens of how is this helping my patient, as opposed to how is this helping me? Every major opportunity I've had in leadership came because I said yes to smaller opportunities to serve and they turned into bigger opportunities to serve. So don't wait, jump in and serve, and always remember you are there to serve, not to reap benefits for yourself, because those benefits will come when people see and trust you as a servant.

Marianne Chen, MD 31:57

I think for so many of us in medicine, we have had such great mentorship that has led us to where we are in our careers. When you look back on your training path and your career, can you recall any mentors who have stood out as role models? And what did they do that made a difference in your life and career?

Speaker 1 32:15

There's so many people that I've been blessed to be uh influenced by. I had the opportunity to serve on the ASA uh delegation to the AMA. And in that role, got to meet people like like uh Dr. Zerwass, got to meet many, many former and current um ASA uh presidents. And I won't go through the list because I don't want to leave uh leave other people out, but you have so many opportunities and you don't even realize it within our specialty to meet, to be mentored by, to be sponsored by um true giants, not just in anesthesia, but in um healthcare um more broadly. I've had the opportunity to um uh to be mentored by people like uh Dr. Ben Carson and uh Vice President Pence. And uh I feel blessed for those opportunities, but I again I'll remind you that they didn't start out as mentors for me. They started with smaller opportunities uh that I took advantage of as a medical student or as a resident. And I would say the mentors who shaped me the most were not necessarily the most famous or the most accomplished. They were the ones who invested in me as a person. They challenged me when I needed to be challenged. They opened doors for me when I couldn't see opportunities for myself. They gave honest feedback while maintaining high expectations. And most importantly, they modeled service. They showed me that medicine isn't simply a career, it's a responsibility to improve the lives of others. And so that's the power of mentorship. Great mentors don't just transfer knowledge, they help people see possibilities they might not otherwise recognize in themselves.

Marianne Chen, MD 34:00

Well, that is a wonderful way to end our conversation. Thank you so much, Dr. Adams, for being here for everything that you've done for our profession and for our healthcare system. It's been such a pleasure to have you here.

Speaker 1 34:11

Thank you, Dr. Chan. I really appreciate the conversation that we had. And I just want to again say to your listeners, thank you all for the support you gave me during my time as Surgeon General. And uh I hope that I'm talking to uh one, if not more, future surgeons, generals, or CDC directors, or HHS secretaries right now because I truly believe in the power of our profession to produce great leaders and to produce great change for our society.

Marianne Chen, MD 34:41

Awesome. Thanks again.

Larry Chu, MD (Producer) 34:44

Thank you for joining us on PDS at SEA. If you found this conversation valuable, we invite you to subscribe and share the podcast with colleagues who are committed to advancing anesthesiology education. You can access additional episodes and resources from the Society for Education in Anesthesia at SEAHQ.org. We welcome your questions and suggestions for future episodes. Please contact us at PDSATSEA at seahq.org. This podcast is produced by the Stanford AIM Lab on behalf of the Society for Education in Anesthesia. Thank you for your dedication to teaching the next generation of anesthesiologists. We'll see you next time on PDs at SEA.