Fired

Fired

By

Leonard Zwelling

I’ve been fired several times in my life. It was always appropriate and always fair. In other words, I deserved to be fired.

My earliest recollection of having been fired was as a senior in high school when I worked as a stock boy at Fortunoff’s department store on Long Island. I was really good at finding the kitchen gadgets people needed in the huge warehouse below the store, but I also was involved in my high school choir and missed some work days to make concerts. My boss at work had enough of that. I was gone. Appropriately.

The next time I remember being fired was as a senior investigator at the NIH. I had rebelled against my lab chief wanting to make my own decisions, publish my own papers, and run my own lab. He insisted that he was the determinant of such issues and asked me to find someplace else to work if I wanted to run the show. I found MD Anderson. Lucky for me.

In 2004 I fired myself. I was Vice President for Research Administration at Anderson. At that time, I had accumulated a huge office and big budget with over 80 employees working under my leadership. One of my main tasks was running the infrastructure for clinical trials, which is a big responsibility at Anderson. By then, I had been running that function for nine years and the faculty had had just about enough of me as a Blue Ribbon Report ordered by Dr. Mendelsohn indicated. My boss, Dr. Kripke, had a new large project she needed done—the development of a major data base of all research dollars, personnel, and space. I volunteered to do that, but thought it best if I set aside clinical research. She agreed. I fired myself from the oversight of clinical research infrastructure.

Three years later, Dr. Kripke retired. Our data base never saw the light of day. The research finance team wanted no part of the faculty like me messing in “their area” and did not want the academic side of the house delving into matters of grant and contract money which Finance thought was theirs and theirs alone.

Dr. DuBois wanted his own administrative team in place. He fired me (actually Dan Fontaine did the deed) and sent me home for a month, after which I was a special assistant to the vice president of legal services, Mr. Fontaine. In other words, my job was to find a new job. I did.

I went to Washington, DC as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow and had a blast on Capitol Hill making new friends, but living alone.

I came back to Anderson and temporarily was the department chair of Carcinogenesis at Smithville, living alone in Bastrop four days a week. I did that for six months while the institution found new leadership there. I returned to MD Anderson and ran the Pharmaceutical Development Center briefly, but my days of contributing to the Anderson mission were over. I did, however, start the blog that still exists today ten years later. It was anonymous at first. I was “The Old Dog.” Eventually I came out as me.

In September of 2013, I retired from MD Anderson and went to work for the Chief Medical Officer of Legacy Community Health, the largest federally-qualified health clinic (FQHC) in Houston. Within weeks, my boss quit and I was promoted to his job as an ad interim. This seemed to keep happening.

I was in for another surprise.

As the Chief Medical Officer, the physicians reported to me, but the rest of the medical support staff reported to a Chief Operations Officer. When the physicians complained about the support they were getting, I could do nothing to help except beg for it. The Chief Executive Officer was bent on expansion at all costs including acquiring community medical practices where the level of health care delivery was, at best, third world.

I tried to make the situation tenable for the docs, but all the leadership cared about was seeing more and more patients as that was how they made money—Medicaid reimbursement as an FQHC and drug reimbursement (they had their own pharmacy). Eventually, I cracked and tried to motivate the leadership to think about quality. Guess what? I was fired.

I’ve been retired since then, writing books and blogs. I’ve been relieved of my responsibilities more than once. Each time it was the right decision for the organization. Each time I found a better place to land.

I think that’s the moral. Sometimes you’re in the right job in the right place. Sometimes you’re not. When you’re not, and the system spits you out, don’t fret. Just pick yourself up and start again.

Above all, I think the story is a credit to my parents and my Duke medical training that built resiliency into me and, I hope, a lesson for my kids. Never give up, even when you’re fired. It may be good for you. It’s probably good for your organization.

There are other jobs and other organizations. It’s marathon, not a sprint.