Go team! Or, more accurately, “Go physician-led team” was one of the battle cries of the American Medical Association House of Delegates interim meeting.
But what if there are no physicians around to lead the team? Would the AMA be willing to call for a draft where doctors are pulled from comfortable suburban practices and dragged to the rural hinterlands like a professional athlete picked by a new team in an expansion draft?
OK. No more sports analogies. But there is a definite trend of physicians calling for physician-led teams without addressing the realities of the projected physician shortage and the existing “maldistribution” of doctors.
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As evidenced by library shelves stacked with medical journals, the science of medicine can be measured in countless ways, but Dr. Richard Levin, the new president and CEO of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, believes the art of medicine—or at least its effects—can be measured as well.
I spoke with Levin recently during the Gold Humanism Honor Society's fifth biennial conference and 10th anniversary celebration, held in Rosemont, Ill. He told me about the foundation's roots and its work creating an institute for research on humanism in medicine that will be dedicated to studying the role of compassion, altruism and respect in healthcare.
The foundation was co-founded by Dr. Arnold Gold, a professor of clinical neurology and clinical pediatrics at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, and his wife, Sandra, who served as president and CEO until August. Levin said Dr. Gold was motivated by seeing how "physicians, seduced by new technology, turned away from the tenets of the profession," such as Sir William Osler's words: "Listen to the patient. He is telling you the diagnosis."
"We got so caught up with the idea that technology could take us out of suffering," Levin said.
To instill professionalism, Dr. Gold initiated Columbia's white-coat ceremonies welcoming new medical students into the field of medicine. Levin said the ceremonies are now an annual ritual at 90% of U.S. medical schools—and he notes that the Golds were able to spread this practice without spending money to promote it.
"There was no endowment," he said. "They did it through sheer will and passion."
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Nobel prizes probably won't be handed out, but peace has been declared between the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and patients might be declared the conflict's winners.
"The guideline wars are over," trumpets the headline of an editorial written by Dr. Jay Lieberman, chairman of the University of Connecticut orthopedic surgery department and appearing in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Can it be true?
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There's no way physicians can keep up with all the medical information available on the Internet, and there's no way that they will be as motivated as cancer patients to read as much of it as possible. It isn't a sign of failure or weakness to accept these realities.
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