His North Star

A revered leader in pulmonary medicine, critical care, and medical education both nationally and across the globe, Gregory Kane, MD ’87, has been inspiring, changing, and saving lives at Jefferson for more than three decades. He cares deeply about all aspects of his role and is equally passionate about both providing the best care for his patients and training the next generation of physicians. “That is really our consistent north star,” he says.

The Jane and Leonard Korman Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine, Kane began his Jefferson journey before he even started at Jefferson Medical College. “I fell in love with Jefferson the first time I visited as a potential student,” he says. “The thing that excited me most was the focus on clinical education that separated it from many other medical schools. With the affiliate experiences and the strength of the faculty combined with a very collegial and supportive atmosphere, I thought it was the perfect environment to become an outstanding physician.”  

Following residency, Kane focused on pulmonary and critical care as a specialty and returned to Jefferson. He shares: “I looked at a variety of fellowship training programs and Jefferson offered everything I was looking for. There were strong research and clinical opportunities, and the clinical faculty was superb. I came back to Jefferson in 1990, and I’ve never left.”

Kane’s credo is simple—and transformative. “Keep the patients at the center of everything that we do,” he says. “Interactions with patients in healthcare today can be, too often, transactional. They’re a procedure, an intervention, and we don’t get to know the patient or see them back over time. The best healthcare comes when the physician knows the patient, their preferences, values, family background, and how they view the world. My job is to provide the science and the prescription, but listen to the patient in terms of what their preferences are. That’s an important part of every academic health center’s legacy and it’s something that I’m proud of and want to continue to see emphasized in academic medicine.”

A critical area of Kane’s focus in the last decade has been lung cancer screening. “Finding lung cancer early can lead to cures and save lives,” he says. “It’s exciting to be involved in a field that’s completely new. In the pantheon of cancer screening, we had historically focused on colon cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, and skin cancer. In 2011, we recognized that there was value to performing annual CAT scans in people who have had significant smoking exposure over their lifetime. This was an incredible opportunity to bring a new screening therapy to the foreground, show that it’s effective, and roll it out in our community. There is a lot of work ahead to achieve what we want to do not only for our individual patients, but for people across the city from all races, backgrounds, and walks of life. I’m looking forward to the numbers of lung cancer screenings matching our performance in breast cancer and colon cancer.”

As editor of a critically acclaimed book in the field, “Lung Cancer Screening: A Population Approach,” Kane is proud to be leading the charge in shifting the paradigm of academic medicine’s approach to the discipline. “When I first joined academic medicine, the paradigm was, ‘We’ll sit in the hospital and our clinic office and wait for the patient to come to us,’” he explains. “Today, we have to be able to go out to the community and meet the patient where they are, in order to get them to consider screening.”

Historically, the highest rates of screening have been in geographic areas that were white and well-educated. Kane says that closing that disparity requires tailored messaging and meeting patients in a way that’s culturally appropriate. “Academic medicine is changing,” Kane says. “We’re not just thinking about the patients that come in through our doors—we’re thinking about those patients who don’t come in, how we can reach them, and how we can change their health experience and health journey by reaching out and being more thoughtful and inclusive.”

Kane has been recognized throughout his career for educating—and inspiring—Jefferson’s best and brightest. “One of the joys of working in the Department of Medicine is that I get to support our students, residents, and fellows across the spectrum of their educational journey,” he says. “That makes day-to-day work at Jefferson rewarding, interesting, stimulating, and fun. I tell people that being a teaching physician is the best job in all of medicine.” One key experience for Kane was serving as president of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine. He is as proud of advancing the learning environment for medical education at the national level as he is of advancing the careers of scores of students, residents, and fellows through his personal interactions.

Beloved by his patients, residents, fellows, and students, Kane has received numerous awards recognizing his clinical and teaching expertise. “As a young clinician, one of the awards I got was from our interns in the residency program,” he shares. “Internship is a stressful year. The interns work harder than anybody in the hospital. They have the longest hours, and probably get the fewest thank-yous. When I looked back on that time in my career, the opportunity to be recognized by our interns for teaching was really rewarding and exciting.” Other accolades include the Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach award from the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education. In 1997 he was honored with the presentation of his portrait by the medical college senior class—one of the youngest Jefferson physicians at the time to ever win this prestigious honor. This year, he will receive the esteemed Achievement Award in Medicine at the 22nd Annual Jefferson Gala, honoring a Jefferson physician who is recognized for their leadership, academic contributions, exemplary patient care, and dedication to Jefferson’s mission to improve lives. 

When asked about his legacy, Kane both honors Jefferson’s past and looks forward to its bright future. “When I look back on Jefferson’s history, there is a group of remarkable clinician leaders,” he says. “I like to think that with the excellence that we deliver today, we’re fulfilling the legacy of those great clinicians who came before us. My hope is that I can pass a little bit of that excellence on to the next generation of physicians, so that we can continue to be a leader in healthcare in the region and across the country, and continue to focus on what’s important in medicine, which is keeping the patient the focus of everything we do.”