A Florida hospital recently established a trauma relief and counseling program for all of its employees. The hospital staff have been shaken by two tragic mishaps over the last year: One diabetic patient who had been admitted for surgery woke up to find that the wrong foot had been amputated. As a result, newly established hospital standard operating procedure dictates that during prep for surgery, a large "NO" be written on a patient's healthy matching limb. In the second incident, a patient was accidentally removed from a respirator and subsequently died.
Back home I have a friend who is pre-med. Both of her parents are doctors. One is a brain surgeon, the other is a gynecologist. They both are adamant and persistent in their advice to call off her pursuit of the family profession. Nevertheless, my friend is marching on to medical school. It seems strange that doctors are warning their children about following in their footsteps. I don't understand.
In Chicago, a woman suffering from cancer in one breast had the healthy breast accidentally removed. To the east, a distinguished health columnist was admitted to a world renowned New York cancer hospital. Over a period of days, she was given gross overdoses of her prescribed drugs. She died. Her husband, a member of the hospital staff, was quoted as saying "If it can happen in this hospital, it can happen anywhere." I might add that if it can happen to a famous health columnist, it can happen to anyone.
All of these horror stories have occurred over the last six months. Sure, it might be the media advertising a handful of tragic mishaps out of the thousands of safe medical procedures performed everyday, but the fact remains that these incidents have occurred. As a robust, twenty-something male eligible for another 70 years and beyond of health care, I am troubled. For pre-medical students at Dartmouth, there is even greater cause for concern.
I often gather with prospective medical school students on Thursday nights to watch NBC's program, "ER." As an obnoxious government major, I always turn to them at the end and ask "Why would you ever want to do this?"
"I don't know ... I don't know," said one young woman as she leaned over and buried her face in the palms of her hands.
An individual's education and professional pursuit should be an investment in personal satisfaction and financial support. Right now, medicine seems to be a shady market. I often ponder why anyone would want to invest tens of thousands of dollars in medical school only to enter a profession hounded by malpractice threats and currently under the shaky knife of a government blindly probing for reform. The luckiest Arkansas speculator would not take such odds -- not even Hillary Clinton.
Of course, this does not account for the personal stress and responsibility that hangs like a stethoscope around a doctor's neck. I have enough trouble dealing with the life-endangering aspect of driving a car. If I were a doctor, I'd have recurring nightmares. I would toss and turn as the "60 Minutes" stop watch clicked in my head. My picture would appear in the watch, with a voice over by Diane Sawyer: "This doctor amputated the wrong leg and arm. Doctors who don't know right from left ... on Sunday's '60 Minutes.'"
Over break I asked a friend of mine why he thought so many doctors were specialists, such as eye doctors, nose and throat, podiatrists and everything else. To my friend, a young, rational and responsible holder of an MBA , specialization did not seem logical.
"I had my knee operated on by the knee specialist for the Buffalo Sabres. He must do hundreds of those operations a year. With enough training, I don't see why he had to go to medical school. All he had to do was learn how to do the same thing over and over again."
His statement makes sense. If I were entering medicine, choosing my path would be easy; I would go into primary care. Instead of merely examining someone's knee or elbow and then handing them a mint as they are ushered out of the office, I could take care of a patient for his life. The challenge would lie in the intricacies of his physical, emotional and mental well being. In primary care I would be manager of the whole -- instead of a repair man for the broken. If anything, it would be a holistic and dynamic challenge worthy of a Dartmouth liberal arts degree.
And if I had my druthers, I would follow the example of two of the more intriguing minds of this century. Both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Michael Crichton spurned their medical professions to become spell binding novelists. Out of breath on this column, all I can finish with is: beware young aspirants and look to the future. There aren't many Dr. Feelgoods anymore.
