What Comes After the Summit? Dr. Thomas Varghese Will Explore What’s Next

Surgeons spend much of their careers working toward the next summit: mastering their craft, building a program, assuming a leadership role, or making a meaningful contribution to the profession.

But what happens after they reach it? And what if reaching the summit was never the endpoint?

Those questions will frame the John H. Gibbon Jr. Lecture, “Beyond the Summit—Performance, Leadership, and Artificial Intelligence in Surgery,” presented today by Thomas K. Varghese Jr., MD, MS, MBA, FACS, from 8:00 to 9:00 am in Ballroom C, Level 3.

A cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Varghese is chief of the Section of General Thoracic Surgery at The University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and a professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He also serves as associate chief medical quality officer and chief value officer at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Varghese will draw on his experiences as a surgeon, educator, researcher, and leader to examine what it takes to achieve and sustain high performance, how leadership must evolve in an increasingly complex profession, and what the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could mean for both.

“We spend a great deal of our careers thinking about how to reach the summit: becoming an excellent surgeon, building a program, leading an organization, or making a meaningful contribution to our field,” Dr. Varghese said. “The lecture asks a different question: what happens after we get there, and whether reaching the summit was ever the right endpoint in the first place.”

Rethinking High Performance

One theme Dr. Varghese will explore is what surgery can learn from high-performance environments and why excellence increasingly depends on more than the abilities of an individual surgeon.

“Sustained high performance is rarely accidental,” he said. “It requires preparation, disciplined execution, adaptability, honest feedback, and continuous learning.”

Those principles have particular relevance as surgical care becomes more complex and increasingly dependent on multidisciplinary teams.

“Surgery has traditionally celebrated individual excellence, but the complexity of modern care increasingly requires us to think about performance at the level of teams and systems as well,” Dr. Varghese said.

That broader view of performance also intersects with leadership. Rather than treating performance and leadership as separate concepts, Dr. Varghese will examine them as interconnected ways of thinking about how surgeons navigate their careers and influence the people and systems around them.

Leading in the Age of AI

AI adds another dimension to those questions.

Dr. Varghese anticipates that AI will change numerous aspects of surgery, including how surgeons learn, make decisions, and measure performance, and perhaps even how the profession defines expertise.

But the technology itself is only part of the story.

“I think the more interesting question is what those capabilities ask of us as surgeons and leaders,” he said.

As AI becomes more integrated into surgical care, surgeons will need to understand not only what these technologies are capable of doing, but also when to rely on them, when to question their outputs, and how to ensure they are being used in ways that improve patient care.

“Every major technological advance creates new capabilities, but it also creates new responsibilities,” Dr. Varghese shared. “Leadership in an AI-enabled environment may ultimately require us to think differently about judgment, accountability, teams, and stewardship.”

Finding Meaning Beyond Achievement

The lecture also will be personal. Dr. Varghese plans to share experiences from throughout his career, along with lessons from mentors and moments that challenged his own ideas about achievement.

He said some of those experiences demonstrated that success did not always mean what he had anticipated it would.

“One of the privileges of giving a lecture like this is the opportunity to reflect, while also thinking about where our profession is headed,” he explained.

Ultimately, Dr. Varghese hopes attendees leave the lecture considering their own definitions of performance, leadership, and success, and how those definitions may need to change throughout a career.

“What does exceptional performance really require? What does leadership look like in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing profession?” he said. “And perhaps most importantly: not simply, ‘What summit am I trying to reach?’ but ‘What am I trying to build that matters beyond it?’”