UP FRONT
Dr. Schiffman’s son, Jake, and brother, Robert
foodie in the family, and now he’s
a lead buyer for the Food Network.
We think he should be in front of
as well as behind the camera – his
fiancée Lauren agrees.
Judd, our youngest, is the
adventurous one. Right out of high
school, he worked at an orphanage
for children with HIV in Zimbabwe and then got his college
degree in human development,
and recently an MFA. He and his
wife Athena are ceramicists and
sculptors.
All our kids and now grandkids have done different and surprising things. They’re the center
of our lives, but we try not to be
meddlesome or annoying parents
and grandparents. Most of the
time I think we’re successful.
In a typical day, what is your
rose and what is your thorn?
Working with colleagues’ goals
and helping to make them a reality brings me the most pleasure.
Assisting and watching students
and trainees grow as they care for
patients is a wonder to me. It is the
essence of what I try to do. Even
though I have several other jobs,
I couldn’t do any of them without
caring for patients, and teaching
others at the same time.
For myself and the health-care
system in general, I think there’s a
large and sharp thorn we all have
to deal with: the electronic medical
record (EMR). In my opinion, it
has impaired our ability to be with
patients and families. With the
way that the EMR works and how
information is recorded, we have
eliminated the detailed narrative
of illness and the richness of prose.
“Illness is how
disease affects
your soul; we
have to know
how to deal
with that, and
not just with
the altered
physiology of
disease.”
—FRED SCHIFFMAN, MD
ASHClinicalNews.org
The narrative has been
replaced with
checkboxes
and “smart
phrases.” The
problem is,
they’re not so
smart.
EMRs have
changed my
workflow and
not for the better. Can they
serve as a basis
for certain
research projects? Can they
improve quality and safety?
Maybe, but for
many people,
the focus has
shifted from
the patient
care arena to the documentation
arena, and the EMR seems to be
a distraction and diversion from
the important practice of patient
care. Humanism is under assault in the modern health-care
system, and, despite efforts by
clinicians throughout the country
to “humanize” EMRs, we haven’t
yet figured out how to successfully
incorporate this record-keeping
into our lives as caregivers.
How do you “protect”
humanistic medicine?
The basic components of humanisti 2