Mercy Medical Center - Wednesday, 12:30 p.m. - Winter Room

 1 Dean Knudson, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School.
15 Michael Measom, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Utah School of Medicine.
22 Eric Stern, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, University of Washington School of Medicine.
29 Ali Khan, MD, Chief of Urology, VA Medical Center, Northport, NY; Professor of Urology, SUNY and Stony Brook, NY.

  McCleary Center - Friday, 8:00 a.m.

 3 Robert Keith, MD, Assistant Professor, Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
10 Annie Strupp, MD, Medical Director, Lewis and Clark Region, American Red Cross Blood Services.
24 Marc Micozzi, MD, Director, Policy for Integrative Medicine, Philadelpia, PA.

  Tumor Boards

Mercy Medical Center - Tuesday, 12:00 noon
St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center - Friday, 7:00 a.m.
Breast Care Panel - Saint Alphonsus RMC - Tuesday, 7:00 a.m.
St. Luke's Regional Medical Center - Tuesday, 12:00 noon
Breast Tumor Board - St. Luke's RMC - Thursday, 7:00 a.m.
MSTI Pediatric Tumor Board - 2nd & 4th Wednesday, 12:00 noon

  The following members were voted in:

Provisional Membership: John Jackson, MD; Frank Palmer, MD; Lee Saltzgaber, MD; Robert Lyons, MD; Eugene Sun, MD

1. No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2. When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3. You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
4. Never hold a dust-buster and a cat at the same time.
5. Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
6. Raising children is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
7. Wrinkles don't hurt.
8. Today's might oak is yesterday's nut that has held its ground.
9. Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.
10. Forget the health food, you need all the preservatives you can get.
11. Old age is when you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
12. It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
13. Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

October 2004

 1 John Butler Lung Conference, Red Lion Downtowner
 1 Male and Female Sexual Dysfunction, Ali Khan, MD
 6 Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Mark Pimentel, MD
13 Management of CHF, Michael Gilbert, MD
15 Benign Prostate Hypertrophy, Wilfred Watkins, MD
20 Vaccine Update (St. Luke's), Speaker TBA
20 Photobiology and Photoprotection (Mercy), Gavin Powell, MD
27 HRT and Cardiovascular Disease, Sanjay Agarwal, MD

November 2004

 3 Management of the Re-Bound Headache, Fred Scheftell, MD
 5 Epilepsy Update, Speaker TBA
10 Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy, Stephen Smith, MD
17 Antibiotic Resistance, Sky R. Blue, MD

Like the Peggy Lee song from years ago many physicians are asking this question regarding their lives in medicine. Career disillusionment and burnout among physicians knows no demographic boundaries. The current healthcare environment with its intrusion on the doctor/patient relationship, HIPPA regulations, Medicare guidelines, length of stay issues, practice guidelines, and increasing paperwork all contribute to the feeling of frustration. Couple these with the increasing demands on time, increasing education loans and malpractice issues and the recipe is ripe for ennui.

It's common place to see physicians who after some years of practice no longer seem to enjoy much of what they do in their professional lives. They enjoy the privilege of prestige and income that medicine brings them but resent much of the day-to-day demands from patients. Their reading and continuing medical education seems perfunctory and they seem to be in a professional rut. Finding meaning to ones work is not unique to physicians everyone has that task; though the stakes seem higher for us given the importance of health to patients and the fact that we are privy to so many of life's intimacies.

It is my contention that prestige and economic rewards, as important as they may be, are not enough for the long haul. The only real currency in life with which we deal is our time. We frequently lack enough of it to do what we must much less to do what we like. We all get just so much of it and how we utilize it boils down to choice between work, family, learning and play.

Its been said that we all start out wanting to do good but end up wanting to do well. Though sometimes forgotten, physicians exist because of patients, not vice versa. I know of no doctor who doesn't get satisfaction from helping patients who are suffering and in pain. To avoid the quicksand of professional boredom and disaffection we need to cultivate the altruism that has been a beacon for our profession. We also need to meet the clinical challenge with inquisitive and investigative minds that constantly challenge entrenched dogma. Perhaps the greatest compassion is that of making the correct diagnosis. We must also pursue that interpersonal component which shows our own capacity for human caring and growth of the spirit. That life is tenuous is constantly apparent in medicine, though sometimes it is strangely resilient even though the bounds of our current ability to intervene have been reached.

"Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friend then lets keep dancing.
Lets break out the booze and have a ball.
Is that all there is?"
Peggy Lee

I submit there is much more to a life in medicine, all one has to do is find it.

John J. Mohr, M.D.

  St. Luke's Regional Medical Center - Wednesday 8am, Anderson Center

 1 Assessing Dementia, Dean Knudsen, MD
 8 The Diabetes Epidemic, Richard Christensen, MD
15 The Role of GABA in Anxiety and Addiction, Michael Measom, MD
22 Chest X-Ray for the Internist, Eric Stern, MD
29 Male and Female Sexual Dysfunction, Ali Khan, MD

  Mercy Medical Center - Wednesday 12:30pm

 1 Assessing Dementia, Dean Knudsen, MD
 8 The Diabetes Epidemic, Richard Christensen, MD
15 The Role of GABA in Anxiety and Addiction, Michael Measom, MD
22 Chest X-Ray for the Internist, Eric Stern, MD
29 Male and Female Sexual Dysfunction, Ali Khan, MD

  VA Medical Center - Thursday 8am, AW Horsley Learning Ctr.

 2 TBA
 9 TBA
16 TBA
23 TBA

  St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center - Friday 8am, Centennial Room

 3 Update on COPD, Robert Keith, MD
10 Blood Banking, Annie Strupp, MD
17 Update on Prostate Cancer, Speaker TBA
24 What We Know About Herbs, Marc Micozzi, MD