I was on a ward of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore yesterday. A junior family member had an appointment with a doctor there. I waited in the day area where patients, doctors and nurses were going about their routines.
If you ever wondered why anyone would live in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins is a pretty good reason. For the 17th consecutive year, The Johns Hopkins Hospital has topped U.S.News & World Report’s annual rankings of “America’s Best Hospitals.”
What I witnessed yesterday was humanity, fraility, medicine and the hippocratic oath in total synergy. It was like poetry in real life. It was a form of dance that could be labelled a “pavane.”
The scene, a young foreign doctor, of which Hopkins has several thousand, working with an 83 year old woman confined in a wheel chair. He was taking the lady’s blood pressure. “90 over 50, that’s low. Here you put on the stethoscope and listen”. The lady had a hard time hearing her pulse coming through the instrument. “Here, you take my blood pressure.”
The doctor strapped the BP device on his own arm and had the patient listen for his arterial pulse.
When the woman patient continued having a hard time to hear the pulse through the stethoscope, he offered that she could listen to his heartbeat. “It’s easier to hear the heartbeat.” Then he had the woman listen to her own heart beat. 30 minutes later he was still having her “play” doctor, alternating with her, who would be the “doctor” and finally moved into helping understand why she was being asked to take a new medicine.
Now I have a least one reason to believe that as a teaching institution, Hopkins could very well be the best, at least in my mind and in the mind of an 83 year old woman patient in residence there.
