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Zen and the art of pediatric trauma: An inquiry in to healing.

I would be remiss if I did not thank each and every one of you for having allowed me the honor of serving as President of the Pediatric Trauma Society. David Mooney, Lynn Haas, Barbara Gaines, and Rich Falcone delivered an organization that was growing exponentially in both number of members and importance nationally. The executive board has been extremely involved this year, and I am very proud of the progress each of the committees has made this past year. But I will let them describe their advances during the business meeting later this morning. I read the book Zen and the Art for the first time over 30 years agowhile a senior at Davidson College as part of a paper had towrite for an English class I was taking my final semester. The coursewas on 19th century American literature and I came up with the wild idea (much like this talk) of comparing Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to Zen and the Art: two journeys into self. I passed the course and held those thoughts and ideas throughout my journey in life, and hopefully this Presidential Address will be a successful journey as well. Zen is a Japanese sect of Buddhism that aims at enlightenment by direct intuition throughmeditation. According to this belief, experiencing a moment of awakening in this life is of central importance. It involves dropping all illusion and seeing things without the distortion created by your own thoughts. Or my weak summation, the journey is more important than the destination. An inquiry is the seeking of truth, information, or knowledge, or an official investigation. I have to credit two adult trauma surgeons for stimulating me to once again have some enlightenment through meditation or reflection as I look back on my journey as a pediatric trauma surgeon. It started with Dr. Cioffi’s presidential address at the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST)meeting in 2014 entitled “Responsibility” challenging us to take “responsibility tomeet the challenges, create new knowledge, provide mentorship and service and ultimately leadership in health care with integrity to the best of our abilities.” The following year, Dr. Scalea was at the AAST trauma pulpit with his talk entitled “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” During that talk he describes a patient he had taken care of, who chose him, not only because he was a competent surgeon, but more importantly, because he also wanted a good doctor, one who would take care of both him and his family. He also encouraged us to reinstitute rigor back into our training, not in a harsh manner as perhaps it waswhen I trained, but to still demand responsibility for errors in judgment. And finally a plea to continue to commit to our core values in this time of change.