American College of Cardiology

As part of an ongoing effort to support cardiovascular specialists throughout the world, the American College of Cardiology has launched a series of “communities” — forums for members who have somewhat unique needs to connect, network, learn from one another, and enhance the overall effectiveness of the College. One of these communities is an outgrowth of the relatively new, but quite active, Women in Cardiology Committee, which recently hosted a special session at the College’s 53rd Annual Scientific Session in New Orleans. There, several ACC Fellows described the paths they took to leadership in the College. Excerpts from their remarks are provided here for those who couldn’t attend.

Let Your State ACC Chapter Put You to Work

Linda Gillam, MD, FACC, is the Director of Echocardiography and the Women’s Heart Program at Hartford Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Connecticut. She is currently a member of the ACC Board of Trustees as well as the College’s Carrier Advisory Committee, Nominating Committee, and Committee to Update the 1997 Echocardiography Guidelines.

When I was in training at the University of Toronto and Massachusetts General Hospital, I was, of course, encouraged to do research. My introduction to the College was at the Annual Scientific Session where I did my first oral abstract presentation. To this day, I can remember the day vividly. From that point forward, I have continued to be very involved in what you might call the academic arm of the College. I participated regularly in the Annual Scientific Sessions as a speaker, an abstract grader, and ultimately as a program planner. Last year, I chaired the noninvasive imaging section of the meeting. I have also participated as a reviewer for JACC.

The thing that opened my eyes to the other wonderful things that the College does came about because I’m a Canadian by birth. I became an American citizen largely because I recognized that I wanted to be able to be a voting member of my community. As I learned about the American political system, I came to appreciate all the ways in which government and regulatory agencies influence the field of cardiology, both private practice and academics, largely by the way it appropriates funding. That’s when I realized what an important role the College plays in advocating for us. I think many people underestimate that role and quietly take for granted that the College will be there, working for us. It became clear to me that these things don’t just happen — the College needs bodies to do it.

That’s why I became involved at a state level in my ACC chapter. I served on an advocacy committee and was lucky enough to be elected as the state chapter governor. That, in turn, opened up to me the Board of Governors, which was, at the time, in a state of transition. It was evolving into a Board in which every single governor has an opportunity to be involved in the College’s national committees and to have their voices heard. Partly because I was on the Board of Governors and was involved in the echo community, I was lucky enough to participate in some of guidelines-writing groups.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of things for the College. For some of these I was not ideally suited. For example, although I am not a computer expert, I served on the Web Editorial Board. However, I enjoyed that and every other experience simply because I learned new things. I have felt most at home in the College’s advocacy efforts and, more recently, in its the equally important quality initiatives. Those activities, collectively, provided me with the opportunity to serve as a Trustee of the College, something that I am enjoying tremendously.

I want to stress that participation in the College can greatly expand your professional life. The College can extend the boundaries of your professional world — not only in this country, but internationally as well. The College gives you opportunities to identify people who can be your friends, your mentors, and your sounding boards. It can be very difficult — even in the largest of local medical communities — to meet those sorts of people. The College can also give you an opportunity to acquire skills that your “real” jobs may not. For example, I’ve picked up at least the basics of accounting and strategic planning. As part of the work on quality initiatives, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about metrics, and so on. It has been a very rewarding and learning experience for me, and I think it would be for all of you as well.

I’d like to talk briefly about how to get involved. First, I don’t think it’s that difficult. I think that, in many states, there are well-organized local chapters. In these states especially, but also in states where the chapter is not so vibrant, chapter activities can be a wonderful entrée into the College. Having run one, I can tell you that chapters are always looking for people who are willing to get involved. Whatever your interests, there will be something in that chapter where you can be put to work.

If you work hard at the chapter level, the Board of Governors can be a wonderful mechanism for seeing the larger world of the College. It’s an elected office, but if you’re interested, there’s often an opportunity to run. Alternatively, if you’re active at the local level, you could indicate to your governor and others that you’re interested in national committee involvement. You may not get selected the first time you’re nominated, but keep expressing your interest and things will tend to open up. Remember it’s okay to speak up, to say that you’re interested in doing something. Don’t feel shy about asking people who have the ability to formally nominate you for positions to do so. I think women tend to think that someone out there will just think of them. The truth is that that may not happen. So, if you want to do something, say, “Here I am. I would love to do this. Can you put my name forward?”

The other thing that’s worth emphasizing is that if you volunteer to do things at any level, you do have to deliver. You have to do a good job. You have to work hard. So, as you’re identifying areas in which you want to get involved, pick the things that really excite you. Pick the things where the time commitment is one that you can accommodate. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. You will be wonderfully rewarded within the College for your hard work.

Volunteer Input in Your Unique Area of Expertise

Sharon Ann Hunt, MD, FACC, is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. She has been extensively involved in the College for several years, most recently as the chair of the committee updating guidelines on the Evaluation and Management of Heart Failure and as a member of the Ethics and Discipline Committee. She has also served as a member of the Board of Trustees and on JACC’s Editorial Board.

My involvement in the College began like that of many others — I was nominated by my mentor to present an abstract that represented the results of our group. Little did I realize at the time that our results on heart transplantation were going to generate a great deal of interest. My palms were sweaty enough just going up there to make my first presentation, and then I turned around to the audience and saw that there were television cameras and movie stars in the audience. Then I thought, “Wow, this is an organization that really seems to have some status and prestige.”

The message from my experience is that one method to achieve some notice and acquire a role in the organization as a whole is to start by being involved in a “niche” area. Back then, transplantation was a tiny field, but it was clearly on the trajectory to becoming a bigger and noteworthy area. Now, of course, we have whole sections of the meeting devoted to heart failure/transplantation.

Although I’ve not been involved in my local California Chapter of the College, I know that you can get involved by volunteering at many levels, often through your mentor or through the people at your institution who will take notice of your willingness to volunteer. You might volunteer to be on a program committee, to grade abstracts, or to review manuscripts to get your name known in your field, whether it’s a little niche or a big segment of the field.

My next major involvement in the College came around 1991, when I received a phone call from someone at the College asking, “Would you a chair a Bethesda Conference?” For many of you who, like I was, have no idea what a Bethesda Conference is, I should explain that once a year the College puts on a consensus conference on some field or issue that would benefit from a true published consensus statement. We held the Bethesda conference in 1991 on heart transplantations and published the document in 1993. This was my real introduction to the incredibly effective, efficient, and congenial workings of this organization.

After that I just became more and more involved. I believe that the key to getting more involved, and enjoying it, is knowing your limits and knowing when to say no. I’ve certainly gotten better at that in recent years than I was before. You need to know where your time commitments are going to go and, when you do say yes, be sure to follow through on them. That’s very important because some of the things the College asks of us are incredibly time-consuming, the Board of Trustees among them. I served on the Board for a number of years and I really enjoyed it, but the time commitment is huge. So, you have to know what you’re committing to when you say yes.

I would encourage all younger people in our field to be involved in the College. Doing so opens up an enormous network of male and female colleagues all over the country and the world who would not be available to you otherwise. It’s also a lot of fun and really beneficial to a person’s career to have the contacts, the networking, and all that the College brings.

Send Your Best Ideas to the College

Pamela S. Douglas, MD, FACC, is the Ursula Geller Professor of Research in Cardiovascular Diseases and is Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Duke University. She has been extensively involved in the College since 1985 when she became a member. Her current post as president-elect of the College follows service on numerous committees and on the Board of Trustees. She is poised to begin her one-year term as ACC president in 2005. For more detailed information about Dr. Douglas, click here.

I got my start with the ACC as a fellow going to the meetings, presenting abstracts. Soon after that, I attended an Association of American Medical Colleges networking meeting for women, and one of the suggestions was, if you want to publish papers, you should know what the review process is like. And if you want to know what the review process is like, you should review. The presenter said, “Go ahead and send in your CV with a letter that says, ‘Please, I’d like to review for your journal. I know I’m just a fellow and I know I haven’t published very much, but I want to learn.’” I did that, and the JACC and AJC letters got in the opposite envelopes, and they thought that was so funny they started me out reviewing right away. There are two messages in that: One is that lucky accidents do happen, and you should take advantage of them. The second message is that you should call attention to yourself. It all falls on each of our shoulders to promote ourselves — to say that you have something of value to offer the larger community. Don’t feel that you should be hiding under a rock and waiting for somebody to lift up the rock and say, “Oh, my goodness. There’s somebody I want.”

You should promote yourself professionally within ACC at every level, at your chapters and nationally. That’s really the way to get involved with the ACC — letting people know that you do have something of value to offer and following through. The path in the ACC is generally through the chapters to national leadership, if that’s what you would like to do. And the reason for that is simply that you need to become known. The governors of the chapters are very instrumental in nominations to national committee–level positions.

You can also become known very easily on the national level by letting people know what you have of value to offer. The Scientific Sessions are created every year and not just by the Program Committee, but by suggestions from members about what they would like to hear and how they would like to put sessions together. So, if you have an interest in presenting at the Annual Scientific Sessions, then create a session suggestion. Don’t just say, “My name is … and I’d like to talk at the Scientific Sessions.” That’s not going to go far. Give it some thought. If you do heart failure, think about what’s a hot topic in heart failure and who the four or five speakers are who should address it, what their topics should be, and so forth. Make sure that you’re one of the four or five speakers and that your topic is one of those, and send it in. And if you get your friends to do it as well, then it’s likely that it’ll get on because, if it came from several people, it must be a good idea, right? Because several people have sent it in, right? So, when you network today, think about what would be a good topic and how you’re going to get together to help each other. That’s one way to get on the path to leadership.

There are also committee nominations. Don’t wait for somebody to ask you if you want to be nominated. Find out what’s available in your chapter and what your chapter does. Most chapters at least have an annual meeting. You can speak there. You can help organize it. You can help fund-raise for it. Those are just a few suggestions. You all should know who your governor is. Next, find out what your chapter does. Go to meetings — these are your local peers. Get involved. Once you’re there, don’t just say, “I want to be on an ACC committee.” Think about where you can provide value. There are scientific committees. There are policy committees. There are advocacy committees. The College is always looking for people to work in advocacy because the grassroots approach — bottom-up, where constituents talk to their Congress people and senators is the way the political process works. In fact, we’ve invited all members to go to Washington this September to meet their Congress people and their legislators. We’re also doing some reverse legislative visits, where the ACC will help you meet your Congress person in your home district when they’re at home. That process works. The Senate has passed legislation about reimbursement for cardiologists, and, in 2006, we’re going to experience about a 15 percent drop unless something happens. So, there’s a lot of work to be done, and it’s very important that we get involved in it.

People tend to think of the ACC as an academic organization, and many of us are in academics. But many others are in practice, such as our new president, Dr. Michael Wolk, and Dr. W. Bruce Fye, who is a recent past president and was in practice until he moved to the Mayo Clinic. The ACC is an organization of folks who practice cardiology.

What important, though, is for you to be successful in your career. The College is an extremely successful organization. It has taught me a tremendous amount about cardiology and about how to be successful in my job. Basically, everything I learned about being an administrator came from the College — how to run a meeting, how to set a strategy, how to deal with budgets. I learned all of it through the College because the College has a really superb and professional staff. All of us need to learn things about how to be effective in our day-to-day operations, no matter what they are.

There are other ways to be involved, too, such as writing groups. If there is a writing group being formed and it’s on a topic you’re interested in, ask to be appointed or have some ask on your behalf. Extramural programs or educational activities are another way. For those of you who are still fellows-in-training or junior faculty, you should know that the College offers grants and awards. In fact, I was an ACC/Merck International Exchange Fellow in 1992. That exposed me to all the leaders of the College and the leaders of the European Society of Cardiology at that time. And because of that visibility, I was put on a national committee, which is what the College does with all of the ACCF/Merck fellows and Career Development Award winners. All of them automatically have a national committee spot because they’ve been identified already as leaders.

The most important thing that you can do is to have good ideas, communicate them, and follow through. The College will recognize your talent and welcome you with open arms.