CEO Update, Ju 2025

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t”.  — Steve Maraboli

Perhaps it is the thick fog of humidity engulfing the DC metropolitan air or maybe it is just the passing of the Summer Solstice — whatever it is, it has metaphorically slapped me in the face to remind me we can only worry about what we can control.  Or with a more resilient perspective, focus on those things we can control.   Maybe it is this resilience that helps be balance my chronic optimism with pragmatism.   We need to be looking for new ways to reinvent our days, our tasks, and ourselves.  We just need to keep it grounded to help assure we keep the good, and recognize the blessing in that good, while morphing to the new.  Each new day brings opportunity.

Your AAOA is morphing too.  Constantly evolving to help assure we bring you the latest, greatest, and impactful content, tools, and resources to help you evolve your practice.   Innovation is crucial. 

To help take our educational programming to the next level, our leadership and faculty engaged in a workshop to learn and try new formats for engagement.  Our members are practicing what we teach daily.  How to we design educational programming to help each of you take your practice and patient care to the next level.  How do we share the latest, cutting edge with the practicalities of incorporating this “new” into your practice? And more importantly how do we learn from each other.  Each of us has some level of expertise to share — whether it is how to overcome hurdles associate with bringing procedures into the office, navigating buy and bill issues to assure patients have access to biologics, cost savings earned through our new member Affinity program, or just the ah-has we can each share on something we discovered that makes our life easier.

Our Education Committee is incorporating some of these innovative formats for our Annual Meeting November 14-16 in Oceanside.  With the beach right out the front door, we are looking forward to implementing formats that blend our natural surroundings with peer-to-peer learning.

We are also engaging residents for a focus 2-day workshop to help them better understand life post residency and the value of allergy and other in office procedures that help round out the practice and assure patient success.  We are very excited to add this new resident component, which will allow the residents to interact with our members to gain their insights into practicing otolaryngology.

So while I cannot whip up a cool wind from Canada to make the humidity go away, I can adjust my sails to find ways to embrace the humidity and find new ways to meet each day with a smile and optimism about the possibilities.