Voices for Change: Celebrating diversity within the AO

The success of the AO’s effort to remedy disparities in its membership demographics will depend in large part on its leaders’ and its members’ willingness to take risks, according to AO Access Steering Committee chairperson Tim Pohlemann. As AO Immediate Past President and the AO Foundation Board (AO FB) representative to the AO Access Steering Committee, he believes AO Access can be a key changemaker by championing underrepresented surgeons’ candidacies for AO governance roles.

Pohlemann, a highly experienced and accomplished orthopedic trauma surgeon with more than 40 years of experience and nearly 350 listed publications, made generational change a cornerstone of his 2023–25 term as AO President. His focus on giving surgeons AO leadership responsibilities early in their careers is informed by his own experience. Pohlemann who recently retired from the University Hospital Saarland in Homburg, Germany, where he was  director and chairperson of the department of traumatology, hand and reconstructive surgery, early in his career had attended just one AO basic principles course as a participant before he was given the responsibility in co-organizing AO events and courses. 

“At that time in Germany, all trauma residents had to take an AO course: usually you went to the national courses and we had two places for the department every year. I was a rotating surgeon not really attached to the department so I was one of four residents who were sponsored to go to the AO Davos Courses 1985 in Switzerland,” he said. “So, I did one basic course and the next was to be asked to help co-chair and chair AO courses and events. The trust given to a young and engaged surgeon by AO icons was my pathway into the AO.”  

Be brave 

“This is something I really advise and which was my message as AO President: We should be brave enough to share responsibility with young people,” said Pohlemann. “By the time young surgeons come to us, they’re already at least residents, have already responsibility for patients, even in difficult situations and as a result are certainly ready to take on some responsibility in our organization.” 

Within three years of beginning his AO journey, Pohlemann was invited to join and, nine years later, became chairperson of the AO Technical Commission’s (AO TC’s) the newly established Pelvic Expert Group (PEEG). 

“When I joined [the PEEG], I had just gotten my license as a general surgeon,” he recalled. “Again, it was a situation where I was given responsibility ‘too early’ and there was not a discussion about whether I was ready for it. It was more about, ‘How can I fulfill the needs?”