Articles that incorporate a Yogi Berra quote in the title are always worthwhile and this one is especially so. I did my residency and fellowship concurrent with the author and, thankfully, benefited from many similar experiences.
I grew up with my loving grandfather as our doctor. I'm so thankful for his loving care, and I'm a little sad that my own kids couldn't have that experience with a doctor!
Thank you for an insightful, lovely essay, Robert. I am still learning from watching others, too, and my only opportunity to do so is when I or a loved one am/is a patient. I wish that I could spend some time with other docs, watching their technique, rather than needing the information being delivered.
Bedside teaching by experienced clinicians withered long ago.
I was in my internal medicine residency when you were a student and am now retired. Tough for my wife and I to find a physician who takes skillful history and does any examination. We've had to rely on our physician children, living in distant states, when ill.
As I read this wonderful piece, I thought that I would love to distribute it (on paper) to our subspecialty pediatrics fellows at weekly teaching conference. They are good and kind people. But their focus is entirely technical. While their tiny babies benefit from that focus, the parents of those babies would benefit more from some time spent on more than just a factual“medical update”.
A nurse will sometimes tell me that I am “so good with families”. It’s not hard to see how a family is feeling when their child, born too soon, is surviving by dint of an array of technology. A sentence or two is enough to make an alliance with a parent, for them to feel seen. These kinds of interactions might become part of our trainees’ conversations with families if they had the opportunity to observe their supervisors doing similar things.
Well said Bob. I think those of us who practiced medicine would like their tombstone to read “He/She strove to practice the art of medicine delivered with compassion and a strong base of upto date knowledge”.
Who funded Flexner? I am sure you know. That was the beginning of money in medicine and it's never stopped. It also was the beginning of stopping natural or holistic medicines.
Yes, probably good to have standards but not backed by Rockefeller. It was the beginning of BIG PHARMA!!
This is how medical titles should be reclassified. We don’t need doctors and professors and specialists in this or that. We only need Co.D. and Te.D. - community doctors and technical doctors. Their knowledge base should be identical, obviously. Technical doctors may be masters in performing complex life-saving operations, but have not mastered the art of being in touch with the patient. This does not make them worse or what. They are simply best in doing things where the human aspect is not involved. In many cases, they will be perfect candidates to provide the care needed. Community doctors can merge technical aspects with the magic human touch, often expressed in a few words, often in silence - but they are there and the patient knows that they count on them.
Articles that incorporate a Yogi Berra quote in the title are always worthwhile and this one is especially so. I did my residency and fellowship concurrent with the author and, thankfully, benefited from many similar experiences.
Re the flexner report-
https://www.cureus.com/articles/370572-rockefeller-the-flexner-report-and-the-american-medical-association-the-contentious-relationship-between-conventional-medicine-and-homeopathy-in-america#!/
I grew up with my loving grandfather as our doctor. I'm so thankful for his loving care, and I'm a little sad that my own kids couldn't have that experience with a doctor!
Thank you for an insightful, lovely essay, Robert. I am still learning from watching others, too, and my only opportunity to do so is when I or a loved one am/is a patient. I wish that I could spend some time with other docs, watching their technique, rather than needing the information being delivered.
Well written and much needed.
Bedside teaching by experienced clinicians withered long ago.
I was in my internal medicine residency when you were a student and am now retired. Tough for my wife and I to find a physician who takes skillful history and does any examination. We've had to rely on our physician children, living in distant states, when ill.
As I read this wonderful piece, I thought that I would love to distribute it (on paper) to our subspecialty pediatrics fellows at weekly teaching conference. They are good and kind people. But their focus is entirely technical. While their tiny babies benefit from that focus, the parents of those babies would benefit more from some time spent on more than just a factual“medical update”.
A nurse will sometimes tell me that I am “so good with families”. It’s not hard to see how a family is feeling when their child, born too soon, is surviving by dint of an array of technology. A sentence or two is enough to make an alliance with a parent, for them to feel seen. These kinds of interactions might become part of our trainees’ conversations with families if they had the opportunity to observe their supervisors doing similar things.
Well said Bob. I think those of us who practiced medicine would like their tombstone to read “He/She strove to practice the art of medicine delivered with compassion and a strong base of upto date knowledge”.
Impressive.
Who funded Flexner? I am sure you know. That was the beginning of money in medicine and it's never stopped. It also was the beginning of stopping natural or holistic medicines.
Yes, probably good to have standards but not backed by Rockefeller. It was the beginning of BIG PHARMA!!
This is how medical titles should be reclassified. We don’t need doctors and professors and specialists in this or that. We only need Co.D. and Te.D. - community doctors and technical doctors. Their knowledge base should be identical, obviously. Technical doctors may be masters in performing complex life-saving operations, but have not mastered the art of being in touch with the patient. This does not make them worse or what. They are simply best in doing things where the human aspect is not involved. In many cases, they will be perfect candidates to provide the care needed. Community doctors can merge technical aspects with the magic human touch, often expressed in a few words, often in silence - but they are there and the patient knows that they count on them.
bravo! The MBAS have taken over medicine