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COM Outlook . Summer 2012
HPD Chancellor’s Communiqué
— Fred Lippman, R.Ph., Ed.D.
Many people say, “I’m too busy.” Well, are you too busy to show
kindness, love, and caring to your families or significant oth-
ers? Are you too busy to receive that kindness, caring, and love
when you need it? The answer, of course, is no. In the same
sense, you can’t be too busy to protect your own professional
opportunities and skills.
Because this is the time of year when the graduates of our vari-
ous Health Professions Division programs are receiving their
long-awaited diplomas, I implore them to be actively involved
in their professions and resist the temptation to stay cloistered
within the four walls of their office complexes or venues of
caregiving. I urge them to be participatory in their professional
associations and in the civics of their communities.
I hope they will resist the temptation to say, “Well, I can’t fight
city hall” or “I can’t be involved in making policy because I’m too
busy.” It’s the responsibility of being self-regulated that requires
all of us to be participatory in the function of being self-regulated.
The issue I bring to the attention of
the readers in this edition of
COM
Outlook
is not specific only to medi-
cal and health care professionals, but
also to most professions. In fact, the
definition of a professional is usually
defined as a group of individuals that
is self-regulated, which means these
individuals are regulated by the composite of their knowledge,
their ethics, and their responsibilities.
In this country, you have states and other jurisdictions that have
their own independent responsibilities of policy-decision rights
as to licensing and regulations. Of course, there are certain
basic tenets to the regulatory process, but the reason I bring
this up is because I believe that competent and well-trained
osteopathic physicians, pharmacists, allied health profession-
als, dentists, and optometrists not only have a responsibility
to learn about the art of their profession, but also an obliga-
tion to understand the civics of our society. Similarly, they also
have a responsibility to be good citizens who are participatory
in providing for the health, safety, and benefit of the general
society—just as they do for their patients.
It’s very important for professionals who want to have con-
trol of their own professions and are “self-regulated” to un-
derstand that they need to be participatory and fight for the
protections of this self-regulation. In order to do so, they
have to be participatory in the vital process of policymaking,
which occurs at the level of governmental representation,
whether it be in the case of the professionals, usually at the
state level, and then definitely at the national level through
their own professional associations and societies as well as
through the U.S. Congress.
People often listen to the multiple editorial pundits and com-
mentators that permeate both the TV and radio airwaves, where
they hear an array of comments, protestations, deliberations,
and theories. But it really lies in the hands of the professionals
to determine the true outcome of their own professional lives
and the impact of their capabilities, their ethics, their integrity,
and their knowledge. In the final analysis, the delivery of care
they provide their patients really shouldn’t be in any way denied
to them. And the way you prevent that denial or that interdic-
tion by external forces—whether they be governmental or their
own professional societies—is by being involved.