CONTRIBUTION

We all want to contribute to something – to contribute is to be meaningful or impactful, to contribute is to leave something behind that persists, to know you contributed provides self-acknowledgment and self-worth.

I asked yesterday about opportunities and in the replies I saw many contributions. Contributions shared yesterday included:

• Fulfillment of information needs for a customer request – serving that customer and all future customers who seek that information
• Recognition of topic organization that was not optimal for a specific purpose and suggestions to improve it
• Collaborative effort to integrate content of interest across Publishing Groups into multiple topics
• Connecting a medical writer seeking to help with DynaMed Community activities with a physician educator seeking to get residents (physicians in postgraduate training) involved in similar activities, an approach that improves our content quality along with networking and marketing
• Division/delegation/dissemination of efforts for educational development so a large task became a relatively easier set of small tasks
• Participation in group discussions in ways that helped team members feel heard and valued
• Meeting with customers to engage end-users, most of whom were getting introduced to DynaMed Plus for the first time
• Listening to customer feedback regarding dissatisfaction – contributing to the customer being heard (improving customer relations), contributing to strategic planning (reinforcement of prioritization for improvements we are seeking)
• Shared approach to personal fitness and relationship development

Collectively we make some of the greatest contributions in medical information dissemination -- this comes from (and only from) the cumulative and compounding effect of every day contributions.