Reflections on key opinion leaders in rheumatology
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I am going to highly recommend an outstanding reflective piece on the current state of the Key Opinion Leaders in our profession, published recently by two of our brightest voices — Jose Scher, MD, and Georg Schett, MD — in the estimable Nature Reviews Rheumatology.
The article itself deals with the phenomenon of the KOL and lays bare the conflicts between academia-clinical practice-pharma and support for original research in biomedical science. I am confident that we all have some opinions on this topic and whether they are good, bad or indifferent, I suggest you settle in and read it.
There are two aspects of the article that struck me. First, the topic itself is like an elephant in the room of our profession. There are no secrets that many of us profit via our relationships with industry given the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, but the questions they raise do not stop there; they also reflect on our functional roles in this matrix and whether they serve the common good. Both Scher and Schett offer not only opprobrium regarding the system in its current configuration, but also some solutions that may help us move away from an opinion-driven, commercially immersed discussion to a more knowledge-generating, problem-solving cooperation.
Where does this go from here? Well, I guess that’s up to us.
The second aspect of this article that stuck me was that it was a piece of intense reflection driven not by randomized trials or big data but by puzzling over a topic and drawing in facts and wisdom from the world of psychology, philosophy, art and beyond. It made me wonder how these busy clinician scientists decided to do this and what motivated them to invest such time and effort so I asked them.
Georg told me they loved working on the paper, and he felt they were stimulated by the project. Jose told me it was an activity that represented what they enjoyed most about our profession. I can only say it doesn’t get better than that and it makes me wonder why we all aren’t engaging in more reflective practices, such as writing about things that are really important to us. Moreover, what about our engagement in other creative activities such as narrative writing, poetry, art and, above all, reading fiction?
After all, engaging in such activities has clearly been demonstrated to positively influence many aspects of living, including our resilience, creativity, empathy and beyond. Who is not looking for this? Among our reflex defenses is “I have no time” but in the COVID-19 era that’s just not true. We now actually have too much time as our engagement in social activities (which we love) have been curtailed. Another defense is that “I am not good at this” but that is no excuse either, as it’s the process or the journey, rather than the destination, which is fulfilling.
I started a hobby of creative writing a number of years ago with a group of senior faculty in an organized activity where we met monthly, proposed a topic, and then wrote on the spot and read our work to each other. None of us were writers and it was initially a bit intimidating but we all found it to be a blast and transformative. I have been writing ever since.
At Healio, we want to double down on our efforts to highlight such practices, as we have done in the past, by sharing the lives of our readers who are “slowing down” to puzzle over life’s joys and sorrows and filling their lives with reflective activities. What are you doing to slow down? What is bringing you joy? Write to us at calabrl@ccf.org or rheumatology@healio.com.
- For more information:
- Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, is the Chief Medical Editor, Healio Rheumatology, and Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and RJ Fasenmyer Chair of Clinical Immunology at the Cleveland Clinic.
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