‘Keep Drop Modify’ at the Carry Forward Symposium 2021
The 2021 symposium explored complex themes and innovative frameworks as the ongoing pandemic once again prohibited an in-person event. CfC also continued to expand topics, collaborations and opportunities to participate. Designers and collaborators Sahib Singh and Julie Woods developed the framework of Keep, Drop, Modify (KDM) featured in many of the symposium contributions.
KDM provided a method that allowed the voices and ideas of the interlocutors to be the focus – unrehearsed and unmoderated. The method dismantles the common academic model of one or more individuals controlling the flow of conversation and often evaluating or prioritizing the contributions of the panelists. With minimal guidance from CfC designers, KDM trusted and empowered the conversationalists to moderate themselves.
Building on the previous year’s work in healthcare and the complex challenges of emergency medicine, the 2021 symposium invited medical professionals from across the country to address what should be kept, what should be dropped and what should be modified based on their experiences as healthcare providers during the pandemic. Most of these conversationalists never met one another and their symposium discussions were unscripted, unmoderated and extemporaneous. Breaking with traditional scholarly formats, these conversations created an opportunity to move from personal experiences to the shared identification of specific opportunities for systemic change. Medical-related selections from the symposium website are provided below.
What to Keep, Drop, or Modify in Medical Practice
Keep Drop Modify provided a method that allowed the voices and ideas of the interlocutors to be the focus—unrehearsed and unmoderated.
Medicine and Humanity, It’s the Ecology Stupid™
Erika Williams,
Rob Inglis,
N. Stuart Harris
Neurologist Erika Williams and emergency physicians Rob Inglis and N. Stuart Harris reflected on how a single novel coronavirus had altered the way we care for patients and our species. Practitioners of Wilderness Medicine, they considered the power of narrative and of curiosity, and explored how the Anthropocene may demand that doctors step outside of hospital settings to embrace human health as an ecological phenomenon.
Flipping the Teaching Hospital: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Motivated Overdue Changes in Medical Education
Joseph Wu, PhD, MD 23,
Poornima Oruganti, MD MPH
Rohan Khazanchi, MD MPH
This panel explored the various ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted how physicians are taught and trained. Drawing from perspectives at different stages in the medical educational pipeline, the conversation unpacked the issues exposed over the previous year, with an eye toward clarifying how the pandemic might catalyze improvements that are long overdue.
Misunderstanding Equity: Healthcare for all does not guarantee health for all
Archna Eniasivam, MD
Alicia Genisca MD
Ross Jones MD, MPH, FAAFP
Sarah Teaff, PhD, FACHE
This discussion centered on what to keep, drop and modify to enable our healthcare system to deliver on equity and justice for everyone involved. How do we redistribute resources and power in systems incentivized by profit and designed to maintain the status quo? How does the narrow focus on access alone limit visions for a transformed system?
Other Essays
Keep, Drop, Modify was also used as the theme for the consideration of the state of Opioids, Care and Addiction with essays by:
Dahianna Lopes, PhD, MSN, MPH
Gordon Casey, Founder, Brave Cooperative Matthew Murphy, MD, MPH
Jon Soske, Associate Researcher, Lifespan Division of Addiction Medicine
Elizabeth A. Samuels, MD, MPH, MHS