Winter 04

Message from the Dean

Minding the Health of Medicine

As part of our celebration of the School’s centennial year, we
have been publishing in this magazine alumni’s memories of their years at IUSM and how their experiences have affected their lives.

Lloyd Lemke, class of 1957, who volunteers for Habitat for Humanity and also practices arboriculture by planting walnut trees during the past 30 years, states, “Everyone in our class had their ups and downs but each of us was full of hope, enthusiasm and idealism that pulled us through.”
Ophthalmologist John Davidson, MD ’87, reports that he and his wife Karen spend time on medical missions in developing countries. He says that one of the most influential professors he had during medical school was Professor Emeritus Eugene M. Helveston, MD, who has led medical missions to treat children in underserved countries through Orbis International for nearly 20 years.

Warren Bower, MD ’62, of Grinnell, Iowa, where a wing on a local hospital has been named in his honor, says practicing surgery in a relatively small town where he was needed and could make a difference in the quality of medical care in that community has been one of his proudest achievements.

It is notable that whatever IUSM alumni have accomplished in their lives, they share a passion for giving that comes as naturally as practicing medicine. Indeed these two qualities should be inseparable.
In this issue, Thomas Inui, MD, associate dean and professor of medicine at IUSM and president and CEO of Regenstrief Institute, Inc., writes about professionalism in medicine, what it means in general and what it means to the students, faculty, and residents at our School. This is a topic of great concern in medical education today, and one of my greatest concerns, because the stress and distress within medicine continues to increase as it turns toward business and away from the qualities that make medicine such an altruistic profession. What Tom and his team have discovered in a study at IUSM, are the beliefs commonly shared by students, residents and faculty in the Indiana University medical community; he names these our “credo.”

I invite you to read his essay, taken from a speech he gave this past August to incoming students at the School’s Centennial White Coat Ceremony. His words were riveting. A faculty member’s recounting of a patient’s daughter who had come to peace with her father’s suffering because it had allowed a student to become a better doctor is etched in my memory. This story haunts me because it encapsulates the profound responsibility we have as professionals to both inspire and stand in awe of the human condition.

It also prompts my concern about our profession because if medicine was a patient, I believe we’d find it in a state of suffering. Our responsibility as students, faculty, residents and alumni of the IU School of Medicine is to make certain that we do all we can to better tend to the health of our profession. The qualities we cherish in our experiences are those at risk in medicine today. We need to join our efforts to perpetuate the values that clearly have provided so much reward and satisfaction.

D. Craig Brater, MD
Dean and Walter J. Daly Professor