Joseph A. Tyndall, MD

WITH DEAN ADRIAN TYNDALL

By David Hefner, EdD

The emergency medicine physician, trained to work fast and precise in high-pressure environments, arrived at a time appropriate for such skills. MSM was entering into an unprecedented partnership with CommonSpirit Health, redefining its learning and clinical training environments. The clinical practice plan, Morehouse Healthcare, was entering a new era and seizing new opportunities in patient care, framed in part by the global pandemic. Student enrollment was soaring as the number of degree programs increased. And the appetite for new and innovative partnerships had never been higher.

Against that backdrop, we sat down with Dean Tyndall one year later to hear how things have unfolded. In this Primarily Caring Q & A, he discusses his major takeaways, leading transformation, Morehouse Healthcare, and what drives him.

On July 1, you celebrated your one-year anniversary as dean and executive vice president of health affairs. What are your key takeaways to date?

The mission of Morehouse School of Medicine is tremendous and the resilience of the faculty, staff, and students during a year of new challenges and new opportunities is a testament to what we can collectively achieve. Morehouse School of Medicine has an outstanding talent pool within, and a mission that is of the highest priority that is an unwavering stamp on our institution’s legacy from the very beginning. Our mission is recognized by all of us, faculty, staff, and students, as the most powerful driver of why we do what we do. Our mission is the glue that keeps us together, is the key to loyalty to our institution and is the ingredient that keeps us moving forward. The academic, research, and clinical missions, coupled with our external alliances, has created a vibrant infrastructure on which to build. We have the means and motivation to execute on the mission to lead the creation and advancement of health equity.

In the next three years, MSM is poised to significantly increase its student enrollment, launch satellite campuses and new residency training sites across the nation, and develop new degree programs, including more online degree programs. As dean, how are you preparing the faculty and staff on the academic side for this kind of transformational growth?

MSM is indeed poised for dramatic growth in the immediate future. Much of this growth has been fueled by the More in Common Alliance and our incredibly important relationship with CommonSpirit Health. When Dr. Montgomery Rice and Mr. Lloyd Dean (CEO of CommonSpirit) dreamt about what can be done together to achieve the vision of Morehouse School of Medicine — advancing equity — it was clear that the key contribution from Morehouse School of Medicine would be to develop the workforce of the future. Expanding to eventually five regionally accredited medical campuses and 10 graduate medical education programs in multiple states is an ambitious plan to spread the impact of equity. The clear commitments of our CommonSpirit partners have been incredible and we are well on our way. The need to expand faculty is critical to the success of our missions. We are seeking clinicians, teachers, as well as researchers and scientists, who will boost our missions and support our overall growth. We are recruiting new academic leadership. We are reviving and modernizing critical infrastructure to support faculty hiring, faculty success, and student success. I am excited by where this is all going.

How has the pandemic effected or changed the learning and clinical care environments at MSM? What are the lessons learned on the academic and clinical sides?

The pandemic has had a huge impact on our learner environment. So many of our students have expressed feelings of exhaustion and isolation. They speak of experiencing guilt for choosing to spend time with loved ones rather than studying or working. Recognizing burn out has been a big issue. Because of the composition of our student body, the pandemic has had a dramatic and disproportionate impact at MSM when compared to other majority institutions. We have seen and felt the impact of this and our hearts are broken. What is important is that we at MSM have to innovate even more in the learning environment in order to support student success. We have to double down on our learning community infrastructure and ensure even more access to resources to support both student success and student wellness. Being physically disconnected was a huge blow to the way we educate at MSM. We are an in-person, high-touch environment that has been an incredibly important part of our educational culture. We need to continue to pioneer new ways to engage with our students and not lose what has been so important to the MSM culture over the last 40 years.

What are your three biggest priorities for Morehouse Healthcare, our clinical practice plan?

We need to expand our clinical faculty, including our faculty who provide subspecialty services. We need to build and expand our ambulatory clinical care capacity so that we can provide more efficient and effective care to our community in so many areas in medicine beyond our main focus of primary care expansion. We will be integrating new technology platforms in our care missions to increase access to our services and will also partner with organizations of significance who share our desire to achieve health equity in the communities we serve.

What should people know about you that is not widely known yet drives or has uniquely prepared you in your position as dean and executive vice president for health affairs at MSM?

There are probably two things I would point out about me.

1. I deeply believe in values-based leadership, where the principles of humility, true self confidence, balance, and self-reflection are key to personal growth and team building. I believe in the building of teams where people contribute equally in driving towards a common goal. I aim to lead from behind, to ensure that my team members cross the finish line before I do, even if I have to pull them along and then cheer them on.

2. I am quietly persistent and relentless in achieving shared success. Like a cyclist climbing a steep hill, quitting is never an option, or you go backwards. You have to dedicate all of yourself to reaching the summit, pulling everyone behind you all along the way. Perseverance has always been my superpower.