AAHPM reached out to the 2024 Emerging Leaders to gain insight into what motivated them to pursue leadership positions and what they find more fulfilling in their experiences. Richard Leiter, MD MA has been recognized as one of the exceptional individuals chosen as a 2024 AAHPM Emerging Leader in Hospice and Palliative Care.
Who has most influenced your work and how have they shaped your contributions?
I have been fortunate to have learned from teachers and mentors at every step along my career path. First and foremost, I’ve learned from my patients and their families. In each encounter, they’ve taught me how to bring my authentic self to patient care and how to remain flexible in my approach to communication to best meet their needs. Beyond the bedside, generous and brilliant mentors have shaped my career and who I am as an HPM physician and leader. There are too many at Northwestern, Weill Cornell, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to mention by name in this space. I’ll list just a few. Dr. Joshua Hauser introduced me to HPM as a first-year medical student and was the archetype of the physician I wanted to become. My residency program director, Dr. Lia Logio, modeled for me how to teach, lead, and advocate with an open heart and a strong sense of purpose. Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum has taught me how to use writing to fearlessly explore the most difficult questions. My current mentor and department chair, Dr. James Tulsky has allowed me to forge my own path in HPM. He’s pulled me up to new heights, caught me when I’ve fallen, and stood beside me to help see through the fog of early career uncertainty. And finally, in their unending commitment to patient care and to each other, my interprofessional colleagues, trainees, and mentees consistently inspire me to help push our field forward.
What is the significance to you of being recognized as a “Emerging Leader” in Hospice and Palliative Medicine?
I am deeply honored and absolutely thrilled that AAHPM has recognized me as an “Emerging Leader” in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. When I was nominated for this distinction, I looked at the list of HPM professions who were named Emerging Leaders in 2014 and 2019. The list stopped me in my tracks. These were some of the clinicians, leaders, and thinkers in HPM whose work inspired me from my earliest days in the field and have continued to advance HPM through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. It is surreal for me to be named alongside them and my superb colleagues in the 2024 cohort of Emerging Leaders. This recognition also validates my somewhat non-traditional career path in academic medicine, as a creative writer and storyteller working at the intersection of HPM, bioethics, and the medical humanities. Being named as an Emerging Leader also imbues me with a sense of responsibility. As Emerging Leaders, AAHPM and its members are trusting us not only to take the baton from the leaders and innovators who have defined HPM, but also to represent the voices and perspectives of the next generation as we confront myriad challenges facing our field.
What is your aspiration for the evolution of hospice and Palliative Medicine?
My aspiration for the evolution of HPM is that we meet the needs of seriously ill patients and their families based on three pillars – equity, evidence, and sustainability. Regarding equity, my hope is that we work to ensure that all patients living with serious illness can receive the care that they need. We must work not only to create broader access to hospice and palliative care for our minoritized patients, but also to engage in research and program development to create models of care that meet their specific needs. I hope that we continue to build HPM’s evidence base, from the “basic science” of communication, to new modalities for symptom management and psychosocial support, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, to innovative care delivery models, such as the important work being done investigating concurrent hospice care and dialysis for patients with end-stage renal disease. While I’m not a “big R” researcher, I’m consistently excited by the work I see coming out in our HPM journals and beyond. Finally, my hope is that we continue to explore how to make our work in HPM more sustainable. The pandemic emphasized what we already knew – hospice and palliative medicine is challenging work. As a field, we seek out suffering and, once we find it, we lean in. But sitting with this suffering risks emptying our cups. In the years to come I’m excited to work with colleagues across HPM to put structures in place that allow us to truly thrive in our work across the span of our careers.
Learn more about the AAHPM 2024 Emerging Leaders in Hospice and Palliative Care and view a full list of all current and past Emerging Leaders.