Editor's Note
Main Article Content
Abstract
Leaders and Leadership.
According to Google Search, in the year 2020, there were 1246 books published with “leadership” in the title. Last year in healthcare, there were 6220 “leadership” papers cited in PubMed. A great number of these described leadership in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who are leaders? What and how do they do it? How do you describe leadership; how do we deliver it? Ernest Shackleton, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg naturally come to mind. Justice Potter Stewart once used the term for a less honorable vocation, “I know it when I see it.” For POSNA members, we clearly see leadership in our Society, and we can see it in ourselves.
We are on the eve of our first Annual Meeting in two years and we are not resuming where we left off, but rather we build on the growth our Society has had over the last year despite COVID-19. All of our committees have conducted business as usual—accepting and reviewing grants and awarding research dollars. Our educational, advocacy, and service committees are in full throttle. All of this was facilitated and stimulated by President Vitale and the POSNA BOD while they worked to keep us afloat in the COVID-19 tempest. Leaders listen and inform as did ours via multiple communications and Town Hall meetings. Leaders adapt as Jeff Martus and the POSNA program committee nimbly pulled off a fantastic virtual 2020 meeting in under two months. Leaders relish broad critical thinking; when Todd Milbrandt and the IPOS team recommended against a virtual IPOS, the Board listened. There is nothing “remote” about the hands-on personalized instruction and mentorship that flows through an IPOS meeting. A virtual IPOS is not IPOS. Leaders evaluate the landscape and make courageous decisions; ours read the recent increase trajectory of immunization and decreasing infections. As a result, Woody Sankar and his program committee will guide POSNA to be one of the first to have an in-person meeting with robust safety and social distancing precautions.
Our Society is full of leaders, they are the authors and the contributors to your JPOSNA presented here. They are also the readers of this journal and the worldwide providers of pediatric orthopaedic care. A leader gets up every day, puts aside personal risk, provides for their family, selflessly works to care for their patients, making the world better while providing optimism and hope. When I see a leader . . . I see you.
Ken Noonan