Philadelphia’s twin monuments to medical automation, Jefferson University’s Honickman Center and the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman Center, bustle with highly competent and often friendly doctors and nurses. The challenge is fighting your way in to get to see them.
As I suggested in this column last December, if you’re aged and infirm, or ill, or handicapped, or technologically challenged, or dripping with rain or snow, or nervous or apprehensive because, after all, you need to see a doctor, this process can be downright traumatic.
I returned to the Honickman Center last week for a sleep endoscopy, theoretically a relatively benign procedure where they anesthetize you for ten minutes to determine whether something can be done about your sleep apnea. But anyone lacking a medical degree might understandably feel anxious about undergoing sedation. The basic concern isn’t falling asleep; it’s whether they’ll be able to wake you up when the procedure is over.
As on all my previous visits to Honickman, I was greeted not by a warm and reassuring receptionist, or even a grouchy and preoccupied receptionist, but by a row of faceless computer kiosks. After I spotted a vacant stand and tapped out a series of questions on the computer screen, the machine helpfully informed me that I had no appointment scheduled that day. Presumably, I had mistakenly tapped a wrong key. You can imagine my heart thumping and my blood pressure rising as I began the process all over again. This time (phew!) I was cleared to enter the building.
A girl sitting on the grass
Here I noticed for the first time that all Jefferson employees sport a name tag bearing the slogan: “We Improve Lives.” Whoever came up with that motto (I suspect someone trained not in medicine but in public relations) no doubt intended it as a noble shorthand reminder to caregivers and patients alike of the basic purpose of a healthcare facility. Except that, when you think about it, improving lives is not what doctors and nurses do.
Do they save lives? Yes, very often.
Do they repair lives? That too.
Do they extend lives? Gosh all golly, yes.
But improving the quality of life is the business of many professions: teachers, say, or therapists, or artists, musicians, novelists, entertainers, dietitians, gourmet chefs. Maybe even journalists. It’s also the business of a whole range of amateurs: friends, lovers, spouses, parents, children, colleagues, mentors.
My own life was vastly improved one day during my sophomore year at Penn, when a female classmate asked me to sit on the grass with her. No doctor or nurse or hospital administrator ever improved my life that way. They did, however, enable both of us to remain healthy through more than 60 years of marriage. For that I am eternally grateful.
The Hooters solution
A few years ago, my friend, the Philadelphia artist Burnell Yow, set himself the challenge of finding some way to brighten the last months of his father-in-law, who was dying of Alzheimer’s disease. This was no small challenge, considering that his father-in-law’s mind had so deteriorated that he barely recognized his own family. What to do?
Maybe you guessed it. Once a week until the man died, Burnell took his father-in-law to lunch at Hooters, the tacky restaurant chain so named because of the high priority it places on its waitresses’ breasts.
I ask you: What could be more demeaning to the image of women and detrimental to the health of men than a place that hires busty gals to wear tight T-shirts while serving greasy hamburgers, fatty chicken wings, and beer to slobbering male customers? And yet, to spend an hour or so being fawned over by all those good-looking waitresses became the high point of the man’s week— indeed, his only remaining pleasure before he departed this earthly vale. And Burnell discovered his own previously hidden talent as an emotional problem solver.
You ask: Who in his right mind would patronize Hooters? But that’s precisely my point: Hooters uniquely served the needs of someone who wasn’t in his right mind— which may be my condition someday, or yours. And its services won’t be replaced by machines— or by doctors— any time soon.
By contrast, a private duty nurse who serves Alzheimer’s patients told me of a dismaying encounter she experienced recently. When she showed up to take charge of her patient, his first words were: “I thought they’d send a younger woman.”
When it comes to improving the life of an Alzheimer’s patient, who ya gonna call? A nurse? Or a Hooters waitress?
A second opinion
My father-in-law, I. Edward Rubin, was a dedicated ophthalmologist who practiced in Philadelphia for 61 years. Goodness knows, he improved many people’s eyesight, sometimes in ways that improved their lives as well as the lives of others. In one case, a mother was told that her five-year-old son might lose his right eye unless he had surgery. She came to Ed for a second opinion. He advised wearing a patch on the left eye for a few months to force the weak right eye to work harder to strengthen itself. The strategy worked for that particular case, and that five-year-old kid grew up to become a prominent oncologist, to the benefit of thousands of patients.
After Ed retired at the age of 87, some of his patients continued to call him. When we explained that he was retired, they would reply, “I don’t care. I want to talk to him anyway.” We used to find these calls amusing. Now I realize that the healing process takes many forms. For Ed’s patients, the sound of his trusted voice may have been part of that process, long after his actual words no longer mattered. At the end of the day, he wasn’t repairing or fixing or healing anything. But he was improving their lives. And they were improving his.
So… if “We Improve Lives” doesn’t work as a slogan for doctors and nurses, what’s better? Here I summon the ghost of Dayton Allen, of the ’50s Steve Allen TV show. Something like this: “We do the health thing real good.” But could you fit that on a name tag?
Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com
What a powerful piece! It resonates with so many of us. My husband is a yoga teacher, retired after 30 years as a surgeon. His patients still call him for the same reason. Thank you, Dan!