Celebrating National Doctors’ Day
It is my great privilege to wish you a happy National Doctors’ Day on behalf of ABIM and to extend our sincere gratitude for all you do as a physician.
This year marks 35 years since Doctors’ Day was instituted as a national day of recognition for physicians in the United States. At the same time, ABIM is celebrating 90 years of serving the profession, and our nation is celebrating 250 years since its founding. This intersection of moments is an opportunity to pause and look at where we are and how far we have come.
Formally established by the 101st Congress in 1991, Doctors’ Day informally predates ABIM. It evolved from a singular event in a small town in Georgia in 1933 to a statewide resolution in 1934 and adoption by the Southern Medical Association in 1935. Other countries honor doctors in different ways and on different dates. The date established in the U.S.—March 30—was chosen to mark the anniversary of the first use of general anesthetic in surgery in 1842, which also occurred in Georgia.
So much has changed in the last 35 years (and even more in the last nine decades), in medicine and in the world around us. Medical knowledge, research, education and practice have advanced in ways we barely thought possible in 1991. The physician community has grown and taken on extraordinary new challenges and opportunities. Through it all, our commitment to the calling and the profession remains steadfast. I am honored to join you in a community of nearly 300,000 board certified internists and subspecialists working every day to answer the call and uphold the highest values of the profession.
In its resolution in 1991, Congress declared, “society owes a debt of gratitude to physicians for the contributions of physicians in enlarging the reservoir of scientific knowledge, increasing the number of scientific tools, and expanding the ability of health professionals to use the knowledge and tools effectively in the never-ending fight against disease.” Thank you for being one of these physicians who continues to heal the sick, advance the science, promote the health of our patients and train the next generation of physicians who will face the challenges and opportunities of medicine in the future.
With gratitude,
Furman
