Healing and Curing

For the past eight years I have been conducting monthly seminars for Yale cardiology trainees entitled "Humanities in Cardiology." In these seminars we discuss issues relating to individual patient care, empathy, healing, and bioethics. As medicine becomes more technologic, impersonal, automated, data-driven and computer based, such sessions take on added importance. The seminar series begins each year with a discussion involving one's most memorable patient. Members of the group are asked to discuss the patient that has had the greatest impact on their thinking and approach to patient care. I initiate that first session by discussing H.S., my most memorable patient. H.S. was under my care from 1981 until his death in 1999. He initially had a large heart attack that required urgent care and emergent three vessel coronary bypass surgery. Thereafter, he did well until 1995 when he experienced a second heart attack while on vacation. Following the second heart attack he developed progressively severe congestive heart failure, which ultimately led to his death at the age of 75. H.S. was a senior librarian at the Yale Music School. In this position he had played a primary role in negotiating bequests to the library which included donation of major works and papers of famous musicians such as Benny Goodman and Arthur Rubenstein, to name a few. He was exceedingly proud of this activity and frequently expressed his desire to write a memoir based on the experience. Over the last t...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news