A Baby Boomer’s Response

R.D.R. Younker Rehab Center, UnityPoint Health Des Moines, 1221 Pleasant St, Ste 375, Des Moines, IA 50309. Address correspondence to: R.D.R.; e-mail: robert. [email protected] Disclosure: nothing to disclose. Dr. LaBan has treated us to a timely essay on the transgenerational divide as it exists between the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation X, and Generation Y and the implications with regard to enrichment of the learning and teaching experiences among these groups in terms of medical resident education [1]. It is perhaps no accident that Dr. LaBan is astute about this issue because it is also the topic of an advanced educational program at William Beaumont School of Medicine, a part of which has been shared with our resident educators by another of their enlightened faculty members who visited our campus a short while back [2]. This topic has also received attention at the most recent annual meeting of the Association of Academic Physiatrists in New Orleans in March [3]. After reviewing this article I have become even more sensitized to the changes we are witnessing and the veracity with which Dr. LaBan has described them, and I must therefore contemplate the implications facing my aging cohort as we strive to remain relevant and engaged in the process of medical education of our young colleagues and future caregivers. As a “baby boomer,” I am a person fortunate to have been born during the post-World War II baby boom and who grew up during the period between 1946 and 1964. Dr. LaBan only briefly characterized our generation, so I will first offer a few of my lasting impressions on the forces and experiences that shaped our perspective and values. I recall growing up in a time of idealism, optimism, and perceived affluence among the members of our middle class. We had access to the first TVs—windows to transport the world into our living rooms. I experienced firsthand the advent of the transistor radio and color TV. I remember being awestruck as I first tracked the Echo satellite with unaided eyes across the evening sky, and I recall the mounting collective pride we all felt for our country’s bold accomplishments with Project Mercury, which paved the way for Apollo II and helped us keep pace with Russia’s Cold War challenge for technical and military supremacy. We were part of a special generation, very different from what had come before, and in large part because our nation was special—a postwar idealized embodiment of what was possible in scientific, technological, and social development. We were the emergent heirs to a true American Dream, reaping the material fruits of our parents’ risks and struggles. Soon there were 76 million of us—the largest generation at the time—and we became the focus of mass marketing that shaped and heightened our material and worldly expectations. We bore witness to some of the most memorable and emotionally charged events of modern times, including the Civil Rights Movement and the political assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were uplifted by the Beatles invasion and thrived on the creativity, heroic accomplishments, and antics of the new generation of icons in literature, sports, music, and entertainment that ranged from Kurt Vonnegut to Malcolm X, Sandy Koufax to Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan to Janis Joplin, and Lucille Ball to Alfred Hitchcock. From our idyllic launching pad, we reached for the stars but were pulled back to a sobering reality when the Vietnam conflict placed many of us at cross purposes with the very establishment that we idolized. As an academic physiatrist, I am a lifelong student and teacher. At this stage of my career, I have come to the realization that my learning and teaching style is very much a product of my generational experience, which differs significantly from that of Generations X and Y. As a medical student, I did the best I could to keep up by reading assigned textbooks and attending as many lectures as I could. We did, however, perfect an authorized and official note-taking assignment and distribution system to equitably ensure that all students had access to a basic summary of the lectures.