A: My ultimate goal is to improve the quality of patients’ lives, and I feel that I’m really able to make a significant contribution to the entire field with the things I have been involved in, whether it be research or collaborating with individuals to conduct quality research. Things I’m involved in right now allow me to facilitate research and medical education to improve patient care on a much larger scale…a guy once told me that, at the NIH, you have a bully pulpit to say, “Here’s how things should be done”…In some ways, being where I am currently allows me to further solidify that bully pulpit.
ACR Excellence in Mentoring Award
Betty Diamond, MD
Head, Center for Autoimmune and Musculoskeletal Disease, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, North Shore LIJ Health Systems, Manhasset, N.Y.
Background: It’s not often that a top medical award goes to an art history major, but Dr. Diamond has been able to say that a lot. The Harvard Medical School graduate has won a litany of national awards in recent years, including the Klemperer Award from ACR in 2005. The honors reflect a commitment to working with others, including a 20-year stint as director of the Medical Scientists Training Program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., and a current post heading the new MD/PhD program at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Still, she says “there’s no such thing as becoming cavalier about an award that is really the work of those one has worked closely with saying they value what you’ve done for them. It’s a different kind of award than any other.”
Q: What is the value of mentoring?
A: Mentoring is critical in one’s life as a scientist, period. I attribute any success I have to great mentors along the way. Mentoring is also critical because everybody needs not just the training, but also the encouragement and the reality check on what they’re doing. To me, it’s a very meaningful award because I think mentoring is so fundamental and so crucial.
Q: In today’s world of tight budgets and increasing demands on one’s time, how does one balance daily duties with mentoring?
A: That’s a hard question and a very reasonable one. But I still think the reason many of us go into this profession is for the gratification that we receive in discovery and in doing research. For the gratification of patient care and thinking about how to improve patient care and sometimes, hopefully, transform patient care. And for the notion that there’s a next generation of investigators and that you can have a profound impact on the life of somebody who is committed to doing the same kind of work and filling the same kind of ecologic niche that you do. It’s a matter of priorities. Everything is stressful and every day is busy. Given those constraints, you choose where to put your efforts.
