CHAPTER 14
The Contours of Change
Dr. Pomahac and the Challenge of Influencing Multiple Senior Managers and Surgeons to Allow the First Facial Transplant in the United States
Background: The Need
It would be very difficult to find a more challenging influence project than the one undertaken by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A young plastic surgeon, he had been treating a patient whose face had been so badly burned and disfigured that he wouldn’t even leave the house. The Doctor knew that no matter how much reconstructive surgery he did, the net effect would never be acceptable.
Dr. Pomahac had been following the articles and discussions about the possibility of facial transplants. When a French team actually did the first one in November 2005, he resolved to find a way to do it himself. He knew that they not only replace what is missing for the patient; they can truly transform lives. The challenge would be to overcome the resistance of his own department, senior surgeons, large teams of doctors and nurses, and the regional organ donor agency that would have to find families willing to donate a deceased family member’s face. He’d also have to persuade elite surgeons to let him take the face first (endangering the removal of organs they were waiting for), and then raise millions of dollars to pay for not only the surgery but the lifelong course of immunosuppression drugs that would be needed. Each step could be a major influence hurdle in its own right; ...
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