"The Doctor's Art" is a weekly podcast that explores what makes medicine meaningful, featuring profiles and stories from clinicians, patients, educators, leaders, and others working in healthcare. Listen and subscribe/follow on , , Amazon, and .
The (AAMC) plays a crucial role in healthcare. As the organization that oversees medical education and thus the pipeline of future medical professionals in the U.S., its critical duties include administering the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), managing the residency application service, drafting guidelines for faculty members and departments at medical schools and academic hospitals, disseminating data on medical education and workforce trends that shape policymaking at medical schools and government bodies, and promoting diversity in healthcare.
Leading this organization is , a cardiologist and pioneer of cardiac imaging and computer processing techniques, who also previously served as the 13th secretary of the and as and the .
In this episode, Skorton shares with Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson, MD, how his family's immigrant past has shaped him, how he went from struggling during his own medical school application process more than 50 years ago to now leading an organization that represents all medical schools and teaching hospitals, why the arts and humanities matter to him, how he thinks about medical education given the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, what great mentors look like, how effective leadership often means learning from everyone around you, and more.
In this episode, you will hear about:
- 2:42 Skorton's unexpected path from jazz musician to president of the AAMC
- 7:42 Why current medical admissions aim to be "holistic"
- 12:09 The lessons Skorton learned through mentorship and why the arts and humanities can create better doctors
- 17:32 How Skorton has been able to "see past himself" enough to receive challenging criticism from mentors
- 28:01 The core tenets of Skorton's leadership philosophy
- 31:35 How the AAMC views the future of medical education, especially in light of advances in artificial intelligence
- 38:47 The importance of diverse healthcare teams
- 46:32 Issues that Skorton addresses through his role at the AAMC
The following is a partial transcript (note errors are possible):
Bair: David, thank you for taking the time to join us and welcome to the show.
Skorton: Thank you, Henry and Tyler, it's great to be here. Congratulations on your show. As a fellow podcaster, I'm in awe of what you all are doing.
Bair: That means a lot to us. Well, as our introduction reveals, given how much you've done, there's so much we can discuss. But let's start as we normally do, at the beginning. Can you tell us what brought you to medicine in the first place?
Skorton: So I did not start off with ambitions to go to college, let alone med school. My dad came over from Eastern Europe actually, during the influenza pandemic 100 years ago, left Eastern Europe during a pogroms in the Jewish Pale of Settlement. His ship ended up being diverted to Cuba, lived in Cuba for some years, and then entered the U.S. through Key West.
From Havana, went to Milwaukee and we had some financial reverses as soon as we got going and we moved to Los Angeles, which we viewed as the promised land in those days. And I fell in love with the music scene. I was an aspiring saxophone player, and I was just positive that I could make it as a studio musician. I'm not sure why you're laughing, Henry, but anyway...
Bair: I'm laughing because I love this story so much. I started college as a musician, so I'm feeling a lot of resonance with what you're saying.
Skorton: Oh, amazing. What was your instrument?
Bair: I was a cellist.
Skorton: Oh, well, that's a whole different deal. That's a much harder instrument. Anything that doesn't have frets or keys is much harder to play. And so the only thing that stopped me from a fabulously successful career in Los Angeles was that most of the people in the city were better musicians than I was. I just couldn't make it. And my dad, who just got to his last year of high school and finished, he convinced me that it would be a better bet, given my skills, to go to college. And so if it wasn't for my dad, rest in peace, I would still be playing in bars till they turn the chairs upside down.
I did that all through college in Chicago, but it's a long-winded way of saying that when I was in college, I was an undecided major for a couple of years, then a psych major, and then thought about medicine because I was always interested in the arts and also in social sciences, and I thought that psychology was sort of a major where you, you know, you touch those different things. It was science, yes, but it was also humanities and social sciences. And I found it very, very interesting and took pre-med courses and applied to med school.
And I had a background that was, um, not real impressive because I really was putting a lot of my effort into the music scene. But one of the schools put me on the waiting list. And for any aspirants out there thinking about med school, everybody turned me down except one, Northwestern, which was my alma mater. They put me on a waiting list and I was interviewed, and I got accepted at the very last moment. And so my message is believe that things can happen for you. I got into med school, you can get into med school as well. And so that was how it actually happened.
Bair: And now you lead the Association of American Medical Colleges. What a story.
Skorton: Yeah, very ironic, very ironic. And once I got into med school, I was not one of those people who scored super high on the Medical College Admission Test. But one of the benefits of having that score was that my alma mater realized that they might have to keep an eye on me for support. I failed a test very early in my first year in a histology course, and the professor took me under his wing and he said, I know you can do this, and tutored me with his own slides, microscope slides, and helped me to retake that test and get through.
And so I left that experience, and then the farther I got into med school, the more comfortable I was. When I got into clinical rotations, I sort of came into my own. But I learned a couple of things -- lessons that I take to this day to the AAMC. One that the Medical College Admission Test has things that can help people who are not at the very top of the pyramid in terms of application credentials. Secondly, that it's important to be patient with yourself. And thirdly, that a good teacher -- and don't we all strive to be good teachers? Maybe one of the best attributes of teachers is to understand that there may be times where the teacher will need to go the extra mile with someone. And those experiences not only will help the person, you know, get over an obstacle, but really, if that person turns into a teacher, I always remembered what it was like to get that extra help.
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