3 questions with the new ASGE president
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In early May, Klaus Mergener, MD, PhD, MBA, took over as the new president of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.
Mergener has previously held other roles at the society, including councilor on the ASGE governing board, vice-chair of the ASGE Foundation board of trustees and vice president. He is currently an affiliate professor of medicine in the division of gastroenterology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Healio Gastroenterology spoke with Mergener about what he hopes to accomplish in his year as president and how the society is helping its members navigate the uncertain time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Healio: How did you get here?
Mergener: The ASGE was founded in 1941 as the American Gastroscopic Club by German immigrant Rudolph Schindler and several of his colleagues, in Dr. Schindler's living room in Chicago. Because of my German roots, I have always felt a special connection to this society. While most ASGE presidents have come from an academic background, my trajectory has been somewhat different. I did start out in that environment, with my postgraduate training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at Duke University Medical Center and a subsequent leadership role as the Director of Endoscopy at Mainz University Medical Center in Germany. But I eventually transitioned into a private practice setting and I have now spent the last 20 years working as an interventional endoscopist in a community-based practice environment. This varied experience provides me with the ability to understand and represent the different subgroups of our membership, academic and private practice, research and clinical practice, national and international. The ASGE is about providing all of its members with the support they need, and I look forward to leading that effort.
Healio: What are your goals as president?
Mergener: ASGE's mission is to be the leader in advancing patient care and digestive health by promoting excellence and innovation in endoscopy. One important way we fulfill this mission is by supporting our approximately 15,000 members in their efforts to provide care to their patients. I would like to ensure that the needs of our diverse membership are being considered and represented in all of our activities at ASGE, from our educational programming and advocacy efforts, to the support of endoscopy-related research and the publication of such research, with attention to innovation and advanced endoscopic techniques but also to the training and re-training of the general GI practitioner who provides basic GI care in a community practice environment.
Regarding our educational portfolio, we will spend considerable time and effort this year on continuing to evolve our programming in a way that serves our ASGE members in 2020 and beyond. Our GI Leap online platform provides us with a great vehicle to bring to our members a variety of programs tailored to their individual needs, and allow them to access that education instantly, at low cost, and whenever they need to do so. Virtual conferences will continue to evolve. While they cannot replace some of the benefits of in-person meetings, namely the networking and direct exchange of ideas, they will become an increasingly important component of a provider's education. ASGE is leading this transformation in the GI education space.
In 2020 and 2021, we will also have a continued focus on ASGE’s international presence. We already have very successful cooperative projects with many international GI societies, and we want to continue to build on this strong foundation. As one example for this year, the ASGE and the European Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) have agreed to conduct a joint symposium at each other's annual meeting. ASGE has also just completed a restructuring of our international committee to better represent all corners of the world on this important committee.
A matter of great personal importance to me is a strong focus on our trainee members. I have been fortunate in my career to meet very dedicated mentors who supported me at every step of my way. I owe much of what I know and who I am professionally to the late Dr. John Baillie, who took me under his wings throughout my training years. Having had that experience, I want to "pay it forward" and consider the needs of our GI fellows and young colleagues in the current health care environment.
The ASGE is already an organization with very strong program elements for GI fellows. Every year, we conduct a very successful first-year fellows course where we bring together the majority of incoming new trainees at our headquarters in Chicago for 2 days of didactic lectures and hands-on training in GI endoscopy techniques. We are in the process of creating a comprehensive curriculum for the entire duration of GI fellowship by adding clinical and non-clinical elements for second- and third-year fellows, and for those trainees who elect to go on to a fourth year of specialized training. As one example, we have developed a senior fellows course that specifically focuses on the non-clinical aspects of our specialty, i.e., issues related to job search and career choices, medico-legal issues, coding and billing, and many more.
And related to all of these goals is our effort to further improve our communication strategy with all subgroups of our membership. While we are doing a good job with disseminating guidance documents and other information to our members via a number of scientific publications and electronic media platforms, we can do better in soliciting their input and understanding their needs. To this end, we will be placing increased emphasis on this two-way communication, on outreach and on strengthening our social media presence to generate a more proactive and regular dialogue with our members and other constituencies.
Healio: How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the society?
Mergener: When I was told a while ago that the ASGE Nominations Committee would propose me as a future ASGE president, I was truly honored. I began mapping out all my goals and envisioned how this year would evolve. And then came COVID-19. All the plans we just talked about will now have to be viewed through the lens of the immediate crisis we’re in. While we do not want to lose focus on these goals, we have to recognize that our members are currently facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. There are very few medical specialties that got hit harder by COVID-19 than gastroenterology with our large component of outpatient elective services and procedures, all of which had to be put on hold for many weeks. This has created a massive financial strain on many GI groups. At ASGE, we have responded quickly to this evolving crisis by creating a COVID Response Management Team to identify membership needs and help compile information and create guidance documents as to how to best manage our GI groups and continue to provide high quality care to our patients. The COVID section on our ASGE website (asge.org) contains a rapidly growing number of guidance documents, webinars and other resources related to all aspects of this topic. We will continue this work as a priority effort for as long as is necessary to provide our members with everything they need. Now is the time to step up and work together so that all of us will come out stronger on the other end of this pandemic.
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