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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;135:979-983
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Editorial

The university, creativity, and freedom

David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif

Received for publication February 11, 2008; accepted for publication March 7, 2008.

^_* Address for reprints: Gerald D. Buckberg, MD, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, 62–258 CHS, Los Angeles, CA 90095. (Email: gbuckberg@mednet.ucla.edu).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The highest honor is to be recognized by your colleagues because you have helped them. I am humbled and grateful to share this acknowledgment of the Scientific Achievement Award of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery with Drs Kirklin, DeBakey, Cooley, Shumway, and Carpentier, who are my cardiac surgery heroes because their contributions have stimulated our learning. This award made me focus on factors that led to my work: the university, creativity, and freedom.

There are no boundaries, because interest in our field is shared by students, residents, academic surgeons, and nonacademic practitioners of cardiac surgery. The university is our similar starting position and where we are initially exposed to the value of creativity. I define creativity as "filling an empty room with new ideas, testing them, with ongoing change during the learning process." This avenue provides the freedom to select lifelong goals that are independent of our academic or nonacademic status. Simultaneously, we also learn that creativity confronts tradition.

Let me share 4 concepts. First, I learned to clarify the foundations for academic growth from the work of Claude Bernard, originally published in 1865.¹ His book An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine is a welcome addition to any library. He defines "the observers" who watch, "the experimenters" who change, and our need to return to become observers to help us to understand what we have done. Second, the role of the university is critical in such growth, because it is here we learn to begin. Third and fourth, the responsibility of our teachers is to guide us toward knowledge and to share a special theme that generates similarity between closely intertwined factors that might seem distant.

The practicing cardiac surgeon is the primary recipient of our experimental and clinical investigation. Collectively, we confront clinical dilemmas that must . . . [Full Text of this Article]