The New York Times has taken note of Abraham Verghese's efforts at Stanford University School of Medicine to revive the art of examining patients. One gets the idea in this article that most medical schools have let the entire subject slide, which is not true. Nevertheless, enthusiasm for the hands on aspect of data gathering has declined somewhat. When I was in training about 25 years ago, my clinical teachers took the subject of teaching us how to identify pathology in a patient seriously. Johns Hopkins medical school was at that time held up as a model of a clinical teaching institution, so training medical students and residents in the arts of examining hearts, blood vessels, livers, spleens, bones and joints was clearly going to be part of the curriculum. Many patients who moved through the clinics and hospitals associated with Johns Hopkins donated important pieces of their time and dignity in the service of teaching what would be generations of physicians how best to do this...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.