Lots of good things come with experience and age…and a few scary things. None is scarier than the fear of losing cognitive and functional abilities (trust me, I’m a neurologist). As senior faculty at MGH/MGB, we’ve grown accustomed to being really good at what we do—and we don’t want to lose it.

Our Office of Senior Faculty Affairs is taking a first step towards opening this fraught conversation with a Faculty Transition Webinar on Assessing and Handling Declines in Skill. “Skill” here means everything we do at MGH/MGB: Clinical skills to take care of patients, scientific and administrative skills to run a lab or a program, manual skills to perform complex procedures.

We are delighted to have an outstanding panel to initiate the discussion:

• Will Curry, MGH/MGPO/MEE Chief Medical Officer, will discuss "Competence reviews at the MGPO level," focusing on how questions of declining clinical competence are handled at an institutional level.
• John Mullen, Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs in the Department of Surgery, will discuss “Handling declines in procedural skills,” an area of decline that can be fully distinct from cognitive performance.
• Michael Greene, Emeritus Professor of OB/GYN, will address the question “Is it time to walk away?” offering his personal reflections on how to judge one’s own abilities. 

The goal of this webinar is both straightforward and uncomfortable: To bring a hidden conversation many of us have with ourselves or a few trusted friends into the open. Please join us Friday January 24 at 12 pm with your thoughts, experiences, and ideas.

With warm new year wishes to all,

Steve