Academic Life & Leadership: A Dialogue with Cliff A. Megerian, MD, FACS

UH Research & Education Update | March 2021

On Feb. 24, 2021 Dr. Mukesh Jain, Chief Academic Officer for University Hospitals and newly appointed CEO of University Hospitals, Cliff Megerian sat down for a conversation together. Read their conversation below or listen to the full audio.

Dr. Mukesh Jain, Chief Academic Officer for University Hospitals:

It's a pleasure for me to be here today to interview Dr. Cliff Megerian, newly appointed CEO of University Hospitals. Tell us about where you grew up and what made you want to become a physician and a surgeon.

Dr. Megerian:

My parents were Armenian immigrants, and for educational purposes, my parents moved to the United States and settled in Detroit. I got inspired when I was little, watching on TV as Christian Barnard completed the first human heart transplant. I was absolutely drawn to the idea of being a surgeon, able to correct a problem with your own hands.

Dr. Jain:

Tell us a bit about your medical training, your early career, and what brought you to UH.

Dr. Megerian:

By my senior year of medical school at the University of Michigan, I knew I wanted to go into Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (ENT). I was drawn to the intricacy involved in working in the head and neck. I applied to ENT programs all over the U.S., but I wanted to stay relatively near my parents in the Midwest.

UH had a Chairman of ENT at that time who was larger than life: Dr. Anthony Maniglia. This guy was a leader in medical societies, a virtuoso surgeon who was very innovative. I felt he would be the perfect leader to inspire me constantly, so I was fortunate to match here at UH-Case. I trained here at UH for five years but, in the end, realized I wanted a fellowship in Neurotology. That entails a two-year fellowship working with neurosurgeons in surgery on both sides of the dura (the membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord). I was fortunate to match at the Harvard program.

My next career phase, therefore, was in Boston with my fellowship at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary and Mass General. Apparently, Harvard felt that the research that I'd done here as a resident was meritorious enough that I should be considered, and they offered me the job.

Dr. Jain:

What are your memories from that experience? Then, how did you end up back in Cleveland?

Dr. Megerian:

At Mass Eye and Ear and Harvard, I was surrounded by the people who were writing the books in our field and were international opinion leaders. It was there that I realized that if you manage your time if you have the right collaborators, and if you understand what it is that the community wants, it is possible to make meaningful progress and contributions in the research and clinical world.

So how did I get back to Cleveland? When I was a third-year surgical ENT resident here in Cleveland, I met my wife Lynne, who was an intern in medicine. Then came the move to Boston and Mass Eye and Ear, but by 2002 we had three kids, all under the age of four. So my wife said, “We’ve got to move back to Cleveland, you know because our family's there.”

What I missed about Cleveland was the Midwest nice. Boston's nice, but it's not Midwest nice! I missed the collaborative nature. Not that we didn't collaborate in Boston, but in Cleveland, even when I was a resident, people were eager to help you, whether it was doing an assay for you, help you use a confocal microscope, have you come in and watch a surgery in an allied field.

Dr. Jain:

When you came back, you were involved in patient care; you pioneered cochlear implants in children — you became a true-blue physician-scientist.

Dr. Megerian:

I learned what it was like to try to be a physician while having protected time to do preliminary research, apply and then reapply for grants at the NIH level, then run those grants. I had firsthand knowledge of how hard it is to have a productive research career and the importance of leadership, understanding the additional time and effort, and work required — people need more than one day a week for research. But I realized the key to getting the time was successful grant writing.

Dr. Jain:

Our tripartite mission is to heal, to teach, to discover. Looking ahead, how do you see UH evolving the teaching and discovering components?

Dr. Megerian:

We will be even more successful if we can enhance the amount of research exposure and training that we build into the mandatory curriculums of our residents.  Today, 80 to 85% of folks graduating our residencies are doing fellowships. Our residents who get exposure and do research, maybe they're in a paper or two — they have a better chance of getting the better fellowship. So we should begin the discovery at the nascent part of their residency program because statistics show most of these grads are going to want the best fellowship.

Dr. Jain:

What career advice would you give to young faculty who want to be leaders in the field?

Dr. Megerian:

Find 1-3 people, ideally in leadership positions, who agree to mentor you. People that you look up to, or better yet, that other people look up to. Leadership isn't always about who has the most technical knowledge, but the person who combines good judgment with a good temperament. Find books about leaders and digest them.

Secondly, at some point, you need to have an analysis of your personality, of your strengths, and your weaknesses. Find mentors who will be honest with you as to what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. Work diligently to acknowledge and understand your weaknesses, and then you can intentionally make changes in yourself.

Dr. Jain:

Cleveland is home to one of the richest biomedical enterprises, great hospitals, a great university. Are there plans or thoughts about building collaborations?

Dr. Megerian:

I think that this community is realizing that we will be more successful if we collaborate, such as some years ago when Cleveland Clinic and UH worked together with the city-wide Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. We saw we could work together without worrying about who got credit for every nickel. Now we are accelerating these collaborations to many more venues.

Dr. Jain:

Cliff, as you lead us into the future, what excites you the most, and what do you think will be the keys that will be critical to our success?

Dr. Megerian:

In this organization, there has always been a spirit of “we can do anything if we put our minds to it.” I want to have that spirit push the organization for the next ten years, doing the things that we know we need: better access to healthcare, especially in the inner cities where people don't have access either due to lack of transportation or lack of resources.

We need to improve the value that's delivered in healthcare by providing the best quality at the lowest cost. We need to be the leaders in science and translational research and drug discovery, as we are with the Harrington Discovery Institute. We need to be the place that is perceived to have the highest compassion and with the highest touch interactions between human beings. Because we now know that the better a patient feels about the interaction, the better they will adhere to recommendations.

Dr. Jain:

Cliff, we're excited to have a physician leader who has a history and an understanding of the institution and its tripartite mission. You’ve given us an aspirational vision for our future, so thank you.

Dr. Megerian:

Thank you, Mukesh. We all teach each other, right?