THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505210043
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
``Put the patient first.''
That's the message 102 new doctors got Saturday during graduation ceremonies for Eastern Virginia Medical School.
``If we, as physicians, put the patient first, so, too, over the long term will our society,'' said Dr. Richard Janeway, executive vice president for health affairs for the Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
``Cost, access and the quality of care are factors that require address and, indeed, some redress. What must not be lost from the equation is the quality of caring.''
Janeway told the graduates at Chrysler Hall that they should not focus on high-tech machinery and the latest discoveries.
``The public, in general, and some of us in the profession are dazzled by the prospects of gene therapy, `cancer-killing' mono-clonal antibodies and other such scientific marvels,'' said Janeway, who was dean and executive dean of Wake Forest's medical school for 23 years. ``I hope we are not bedazzled by the science, because that is only half of what we are about.''
Doctors, he said, must recognize the ``absolute necessity of attending to the human condition, and therein lies the art of our profession. The art must temper the science.''
Janeway also told the graduates to ``accept the fact that, try as you might, and you should try, you will never be perfect. . . . Physicians are not expected to do extraordinary things. We are asked only to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. Remember that, and you will sleep better.''
He also cautioned the new doctors to question supposed truths, even those they learned in medical school: ``Don't believe for a minute that everything you have been taught is correct. . . . The faculty don't delude you on purpose, but neither are we perfect. Most of us admit it. Question and learn for the rest of your life.''
The students were in the 20th - and the largest - graduating class in the school's history. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
L. TODD SPENCER
Graduates of the Eastern Virginia Medical School take the
Hippocratic oath after receiving their diplomas Saturday in
ceremonies at Chrysler Hall. The 102 graduates represent the largest
class in the school's 20-year history.
Dr. Richard Janeway of Wake Forest University tells the new doctors
at Norfolk's Chrysler Hall: ``I hope we are not bedazzled by the
science, because that is only half of what we are about.''
by CNB