It's the system that needs saving

Modern Healthcare just ran my commentary about a new TV drama - one that makes it clear that doctors have to save the system, not just the patients.

I've written about TV doctors before. There was the heroic Dr. Kildare. There was Marcus Welby, MD, who would comfort patients in the morning, save a roadside calf on his way to the hospital, and then perform surgery ... and then we moved to House, a stunningly brilliant, addicted and unlikeable bad example for our medical students.

But if you brought back Marcus Welby, he'd spend his days, as Atul Gawande just wrote in the New Yorker, being mastered by his computer.

We need to start from the beginning. We need to select medical students based on empathy, and we need to teach them how to understand and communicate meaning. In House's era, a doctor had to remember everything - that rare one-in-a-million diagnosis that only the most brilliant could magically conjure up and save the patient.

The future, however, will place that memory in a machine. It will demand wisdom for our students and colleagues, not memorization. No machine can answer the question: What does this mean, doctor?

Wisdom will be even more critical as we pursue the new frontier of medicine. No, the new frontier isn't better genomics. It's integrating physical health with mental health, and yes, social health. Our longevity, unfortunately, still depends on our zip code, not our genetic code. That challenge - the challenge of complex care - should be our greatest next frontier to discover and make happen.

My thanks to Modern Healthcare for running the column: