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Upon accepting the ninth annual Dennis Thomson Leadership Award, Selwyn Rogers, MD, MPH, spoke poignantly of an animal called a Thomson’s Gazelle.
“Not only does it go fast, it goes long and lives in herds,” said Rogers, the division chief of Trauma, Burns and Surgical Critical Care and director of the Center for Surgery and Public Health, to a packed Bornstein Amphitheater on Wednesday afternoon. “It doesn’t go by itself.”
Rogers likened the gazelle to compassionate leadership in health care and the importance of team work, crediting each member of the teams he works with. “This award is clearly not about me,” he said. “It’s a reflection of all the people I’ve been privileged and honored to work with every day to focus on one common goal: providing the highest level of care to patients.”
BWH President Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA, presented the award to Rogers. “We stand here in the shadow of somebody who will be one of the great leaders in health care,” he said. “Just as Selwyn has an eye on improving surgical outcomes across the country and world, he never loses focus on the importance of team work.”
Rogers wasn’t the only leader honored at the ninth annual Dennis Thomson Leadership and Compassionate Care Award Ceremony last week. Robert Goldszer, MD, MBA, associate chief medical officer and director of Primary Care, was surprised with the first ever Dennis Thomson Lifetime Achievement Award.
In addition to the Leadership and Lifetime Achievement Awards, six compassionate care scholarships were presented to BWHers to pursue projects that enhance compassionate patient care. “This is a wonderful group of people with great ideas, and this award helps them get started,” Goldszer said of the scholarship recipients.
The BWH employees, friends and family members gathered in the audience listened as keynote speaker John Auerbach, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, detailed the four priorities for public health in the state: health care reform, eliminating racial and ethnic disparities, promoting wellness and managing chronic disease. He lauded BWH for its engagement with the community around it.
“A lot of times, hospitals are very insular and operate like little cities,” he said. “There aren’t many that integrate fully within the community, but Brigham and Women’s is one of them.”
In his former role as executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, Auerbach collaborated with Rogers on a number of violence prevention initiatives.
“I’ve had the privilege to work to improve health care through the Center for Surgery and Public Health,” Rogers said. “It’s an incredible privilege to come to work every day with the opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life.”
See more photos of the Thomson Award ceremony
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