Advocacy has been increasingly emphasized in organized medicine and graduate medical education over the past several years. In fact, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core competencies state that advocacy should be actively taught during residency.1 While the degree to which advocacy should be taught is a matter of some debate, the consensus in organized medicine and in the medical literature is that there needs to be more advocacy on the part of physicians.2,3 Even with this known goal of increased advocacy education, there is currently a lack of “know how” by the average physician anesthesiologist in terms of “how” to engage in advocacy. While there are entire college degrees in the art of advocacy and the science of influencing political events, the key component of this can generally be summarized into one principle concept: relationships matter.
The personal touch is the determining factor...
