Abraham Verghese: A Doctor’s Touch
Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam.
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ABOUT Abraham Verghese
“Before he finished medical school, Abraham Verghese spent a year on the other end of the medical pecking order, as a hospital orderly. Moving unseen through the wards, he saw the patients with new eyes, as human beings rather than collections of illnesses.
The experience has informed his work as a Doctor and as a Writer. ‘Imagining the Patient’s Experience’ was the motto of the Centre for Medical Humanities & Ethics, which he founded at the University of Texas San Antonio, where he brought a deep-seated empathy.
He’s now a Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford, where his old-fashioned weekly rounds have inspired a new initiative, the Stanford 25, teaching 25 fundamental physical exam skills and their diagnostic benefits to interns.
He’s also a best-selling writer, with two memoirs and a recent novel, ‘Cutting for Stone’, a moving story of two Ethiopian brothers bound by medicine and betrayal. He says: “I still find the best way to understand a hospitalised patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.”
The VIDEO
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