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PRESIDENT’S
MESSAGE
President’s Message
By Sheldon Gross, MD, 2018 BCMS President
Dear Colleagues, The second theme
It is with a great sense of honor and a strong sense of challenge will be activism. We
are already a society
that I start my year as president of the Bexar County Medical So- of activists. I was so
ciety. I have been active in organized medicine for over 30 years. proud of our re-
I have seen tremendous things accomplished at our county level, sponse to Hurricane
state level, and national level by organized medicine. I recall with Harvey. We had so
pride how in 1988, we totally changed the nature of our state’s many hundreds of
supreme court. We are all still benefitting from the tort reform volunteers who were prepared to help with evacuees from various
package that was passed 12 years ago and the constitutional parts of Texas in any way possible. This was coordinated by
amendment which ensured that it would not be thrown out as un- Melody Newsom, our Chief Operating Officer. She did a superb
constitutional. I have seen how effective our advocacy efforts can job. This type of activist spirit is so crucial for our medical society
be in Austin as well as Washington, D.C. The basic building block to stay active, dynamic, and to continue to thrive in the 21st Cen-
of organized medicine all starts at the county level. It is the tury. I would encourage any member of our society with an idea
county medical society that introduces people to organized med- involving physician activism to contact me or our medical society.
icine. It is the county medical society that brings forth resolutions So many superb ideas and projects start with the imagination of a
to be debated at our state and national meetings. It is the county single member.
medical society that identifies those individuals who we see as po-
tential leaders for the future. Lastly, I am going to do everything possible to identify future
leaders and to give them leadership training for future years. I have
Through my involvement with the American Medical Association learned from some of my friends in the military that leadership skills
and its Political Action Committee, I have visited numerous state can be natural, but they can also be taught very effectively. I hope
medical associations around the country. In my opinion, without to begin a series of seminars on various aspects of leadership.
doubt, the Texas Medical Association is the strongest and most ef- These will be geared towards younger physicians. Hopefully these
fective state medical society in the country. I also feel that the Bexar will be individuals that will become actively involved in our society,
County Medical Society is already a great institution and has the po- in the Texas Medical Association, the American Medical Associa-
tential to become even greater. Throughout my year as president, tion, their hospital staff, as well as specialty societies and numerous
I will focus on two main themes. other organizations. Physicians are constantly asked to lead. Most
of us have received essentially no formal training in this area. I
My first theme will be one of relevance. I started my practice in hope to change that.
1983 and I am a pediatric neurologist in solo private practice. My
daughter Leah is a Cardiothoracic Anesthesiologist on the faculty I see the potential of this medical society as essentially without
of UT Health here in San Antonio. It was very obvious to me that limit. I challenge every member to identify programs and other ac-
the relevant issues that my daughter faced after her training were tivities that our society can do to enhance our relevance and increase
dramatically different than the issues I faced in 1983. I will spend activism within San Antonio.
the next 12 months trying to identify those issues of relevance to
new physicians as well as physicians at different stages of their prac- Thank you for this honor. I will do my best.
tice. We have already started seminars with regards to how to ne- Sincerely,
gotiate a contract for those just starting out. We hope to have a Sheldon Gross, MD
series of seminars that will enhance and increase our relevance to
physicians at all stages of practice.
8 San Antonio Medicine • January 2018
