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BLOG: Heroes and mentors
My colleague John Hovanesian wrote a recent blog post about the most influential person in his ophthalmic career. It was wonderful, and I think it’s an exercise each of us should pursue. Who had the greatest influence on your career as a doctor, especially in your formative years?
The most difficult question to answer on all of my med school interviews was: “Why do you want to be a doctor?” I simply can’t remember ever not wanting to be a doctor, and that’s because of Dr. Charles Roy, my pediatrician growing up in Massachusetts. Dr. Roy was a man of substance. He commanded respect both in and outside his office. Everyone in town looked up to him. Dr. Roy would have retired and become governor of Massachusetts before kowtowing to the ICD-10 cabal. He would go to a CME meeting and have a cup of coffee, Sunshine Law be damned! Dr. Roy was why I wanted to be a doctor.
Harvey Taterka, the late chief of ophthalmology at the Manhattan VA Medical Center, is why I am an ophthalmologist. While being low man on any totem pole is frustrating, I loathed the duties required of first-year residents at the VA. It was bad enough that we were expected to draw blood, do lumbar punctures and transport patients at Bellevue, but the sheer drudgery of doing afternoon testing at the VA had me contemplating a return to internal medicine. This was not the cruise I signed up for. To say that I did a poor job of hiding my bitterness is the epitome of understatement.
Dr. Taterka wasn’t buying it, though. Here’s a guy who’d suffered a stroke in his 50s, a talented surgeon who would never again hold an instrument in the OR, and one of his pupils is whining because he has to personally do manual Goldmann visual fields. Dr. Taterka sat me down in the cafeteria and set me straight. He liked me, and the pain of watching someone consider willingly turning away from that which had been ripped away from him was palpable. He said he’d help, which meant he would listen whenever I needed him. He did, I stayed, and the rest is history.
A toast (raises a glass of The Macallan, Dr. Taterka’s last gift) to the men who made me want to be a doctor.
Disclosure: White reports he is a consultant for Bausch + Lomb, Allergan, Shire and Eyemaginations and on the speakers board for Bausch + Lomb, Allergan and Shire.