AMA Conventioneers Elect Texan as Group’s First Female President

CHICAGO — A family practitioner from Texas will be the first woman to preside over the 150-year-old American Medical Assn., AMA policymakers decided Sunday at their annual convention.

Dr. Nancy W. Dickey’s yearlong presidency will begin in June 1998. She ran unopposed and was elected by acclamation by the representatives of the nation’s largest organization of doctors.

“Nancy Dickey is very bright, compassionate, tough as nails, a good advocate for her positions,” said Dr. Richard F. Corlin, speaker of the AMA House of Delegates. “She can get right to the core of issues . . . as opposed to spending a lot of time dealing with the froufrou around the edges.”

About 11% of the AMA’s members are women, while about 20% of U.S. doctors are women. Four of the group’s 20 trustees are women.

The AMA’s policies have no legal effect, but the group’s considerable lobbying, teaching and publishing activities can have a significant impact on medical opinion and public policy and health.

Dr. Percy Wootton, an internist from Richmond, Va., was inaugurated to serve as president for the coming year. The $222,000-a-year presidency is mostly a speechmaking role for the 292,000-member group.

Dickey, 46, chairs the AMA Board of Trustees, a more powerful role than the presidency but a less visible one. She built her AMA career by focusing on ethics, serving for nine years on the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, including three as chairwoman.

She got her bachelor’s degree from Stephen F. Austin State University and her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.