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Boil
last night’s Convocation address down to one sentence,
and the result would be this: “Treat each day as your
last and each patient as your first.” That was the advice
Douglas P. Zipes, MD, of Indiana University School of
Medicine, gave the newest Fellows of the College during
his installation as the College’s 50th president.
Dr.
Zipes distilled that message from an illustrious medical
career that began with a degree from Harvard Medical
School in 1964. He went on to become a distinguished
professor of medicine, pharmacology, and toxicology
at Indiana University in 1994 and director of the university’s
Cardiology Division and Krannert Institute of Cardiology
the following year. A leader in the field of electrophysiology,
he is the founding editor and editor in chief of the
Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology and Cardiology
in Review and author/co-editor of 13 books and more
than 600 articles. He received the College’s Distinguished
Scientist Award in 1996.
Dr.
Zipes has also been an active member of the College
and other professional societies. He has served as a
member of the ACC’s Board of Trustees and Executive
Committee, as a member of the American Board of Internal
Medicine’s Executive Committee and the Institute for
Clinical Evaluation’s Board of Trustees, and as president
of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology
and the Association of University Cardiologists.
“I am excited and honored to be installed as the 50th
president of the College,” Dr. Zipes said. “There is
so much we can accomplish together over the next year.”
One of Dr. Zipes’ key goals is to expand the College’s
reach across borders. He has already created a task
force to examine how the College could share its wealth
of educational materials with physicians and patients
around the world. Fellowships in clinical investigation
are another of Dr. Zipes’ priorities. He hopes to build
on the work he began as first chair of the ACC Development
Committee by exploring ways to create an ACC endowment.
He also plans to continue the ongoing initiatives related
to the College’s mission of education, advocacy, and
patient care, as reported in previous issues of Scientific
Session News.
Most
important, Dr. Zipes wants to help ensure that young
cardiologists have careers as fulfilling as his own.
Acknowledging that managed care, new communication technologies,
and patients with increasingly complex conditions have
changed the practice of cardiology, he urged Fellows
to remember that one thing about medicine hasn’t changed.
“It’s still all about the simple human act of caring
for the patient,” said Dr. Zipes, describing his own
experience as a patient undergoing mitral valve repair.
“Caring for the patient is caring about the patient.”
To
underscore that message, the Convocation ceremony ended
with a recitation of the Hippocratic Oath. The famous
language professor, John Rassias, PhD, had planned to
attend dressed as Hippocrates and lead the physicians
in a reaffirmation of their vows. Dr. Rassias suffered
a mild myocardial infarction on Friday and was unable
to attend.
Filling
in for Dr. Rassias and Hippocrates himself, Dr. Zipes
urged the Fellows to keep the Oath always on their minds.
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