The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

You read the Garden Girl e-zine for ideas about how to live more healthfully in your urban environment. Likewise, you probably go to your doctor for guidance with your health.

Does your doctor help you improve your health, or only have time to focus on disease? Is the US medical system a "health care system" or a "disease care system"?

Before reading further, close your eyes and ask yourself this question: "What is health?" Then go to the message board of the Garden Girl e-zine and share your definition of health with the other readers.

Now write another message on the board, answering this question: "What advice has my doctor given me recently that has helped me be healthy?"

On my first day at Boston University School of Medicine in 1982, the Dean told our nervous audience of 168 students, "in the next four years, you are going to learn 10,000 new words. You each have a good memory, or else you would not be here. Your memory will be stretched to the maximum here."

He was right. We learned a lot of words that ended in "itis" (appendicitis, tonsillitis), which means "inflammation of" (appendix, tonsils). We learned thousands of drug names, and oftentimes two names for the same drug (Prilosec, Omeprazole). When we started caring for patients, we learned how confusing this is. It's like giving your child two different names (Sam, Ben) and never creating a predictable pattern which you use when you call him.

We learned about diseases of organs, names of bacteria and viruses that infect people, and how to surgically remove parts of bodies, fix broken bones and stitch up lacerations.

After four years, I began internal medicine residency at Carney Hospital in Dorchester, Mass. On the first day, our Chief Resident strode into the auditorium and looked at our nervous group of interns with no glint of a smile or compassion. Silently, she turned to the blackboard and drew a large circle. She turned and solemnly looked us up and down. "This is you." Turning to the board, she drew a dozen arrows sticking out from the periphery of the circle, each of different lengths. She turned back to us. "These are all the things calling for your attention at the same time. A nurse needs an order. A family wants to talk to you. A patient can't breathe. In the next three years, you will learn that even though this (she circled the longest arrow) is screaming the loudest for your attention, this (she pointed to the shortest arrow) is the sickest patient.

Go back to the message board and answer this final question: In those seven years of medical training, how much do young doctors learn about how to help patients with their health? Next month I'll share my experience.