Yale-PCCSM Newsletter

Dear Colleagues,

Since our previous newsletter, much has happened—the ATS conference of 2023 took place, one class of fellows graduated and another started, world turmoil continued, and now the summer has nearly passed.

For me, this summer was special: First it was an opportunity to visit family members that I have not seen for three years because of the pandemic. This required a tough decision—I had to miss our fellows’ graduation, my favorite event of the year. After thinking about it, I decided to use this as a lesson to our fellows about the importance of work-life integration.

And so I recorded a message to our fellows (which can be seen here), and I said, “ I could not be with you because I had to make a choice. I've not seen some family members for more than three years because of the pandemic. This was a unique opportunity, and I chose to go. I'm telling this to you because this is what I would like you to take with you as you become experts, professionals, leaders in our fields. We have an amazing profession. We reduce suffering and fight disease, but we also have a life. We have important others, families, passions, hobbies, and ideologies. Many of us are activists. And we should remember that only the integration of both work and life makes us really good, a complete human being.” I hope that this message resonated with our fellows, and I hope that all of us can make an effort to be work-life balance role models for our teams, mentees, and peers.

The second reason this summer was special was because 10 years have passed since I took over as the chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Yale on July 1, 2013. I never planned on or expected to be a chief, and now I find myself a veteran of this most exciting position in academic medicine. I guess I will someday dedicate time to gathering my lessons and insights, but I can provide a summary from my biggest lesson. Being a chief is mostly about providing your faculty, trainees, and staff with the space to be successful. And when I say space, I mean the conditions, infrastructure, atmosphere, support, vision, and guardrails that allow the amazing people in our division to express their talents, because they are uniquely talented. All of them. As I look back on our amazing growth, productivity, notoriety, and excellence over the last 10 years, I believe that the biggest success of our institution was just that—allowing our superb teams to follow their passions, express their talents, diagnose, treat, educate, communicate, research, compete for funds, and live.

This success is not only reflected in everything that we do, but also in external recognitions, such as awards. At ATS 2023, we presented a board with the images of the Yale-PCCSM members who have been recognized by the ATS in the last decade—it speaks for itself. This coming meeting of CHEST, in Hawaii, we have two of Yale-PCCSM’s leaders giving honor lectures: Dr. Lynn Tanoue is a recipient of the Richard S. Irwin, MD, Master FCCP Honor Lecture Award, and Dr. Margaret Pisani is a recipient of the Roger C. Bone Memorial Lecture in Critical Care. We are all proud of their achievements and recognitions and hope that if you attend Chest 2023, you attend their honorary talks.

Below are some stories about Yale-PCCSM—I hope you enjoy them. As always, I am looking forward to seeing all of you! May you all have a happy Labor Day, a great start to the academic year, a happy Ethiopian New Year, and a happy Jewish New Year!

Shanah Tova!

Naftali

Naftali Kaminski, MD
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Endowed Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary) and Pharmacology
Section Chief, Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine