Harold Wade Program
"The physician we educate for tommorow will need to have the scientific and technical skills of today as well as the same low-tech care giving skills that their grandparents' doctor had."
—C. Everett Koop
The Harold Wade Fund sponsors medical school lectures, seminars, and workshops dedicated to restoring human context and clinical art to modern medical practice. Each of us can no doubt document personally the unfortunate dehumanization of medical practice - one of the major concerns addressed by the C. Everett Koop Institute.
Who Was Harold Wade?
Harold Wade was a small-town grocer in Southern Illinois, not far from St. Louis. He cared about people and he called all of his customers by name. His standard of service and sense of community was similar to that of the traditional town doctor, who made house calls, took time to listen, and knew his patients by name.
Though known and respected in his home town, Harold Wade was little more than a case number to the specialists in the large urban medical center where he died in the final stages of Parkinson's disease. He received the best medical treatment available. But he died outside the context and the meaning of his life, isolated, disoriented, and nearly alone. The crucial supportive role of family and community was largely ignored by attending physicians. He did not die as he had lived -- on a first - name basis.
The Doctor - Patient Relationship
Pressured by a system that applies industrial standards of productivity and efficiency to the practice of medicine, most physicians don't know their patients anymore. Charts, records, and test abound, but the bond of human trust and confidence so important to the delivery of effective care is fading. Though physicians might care today as much as ever, and though technology has permitted great advances, the crucial, individual, one-to-one basis of medical practice is seriously eroding under a flood of third party insurance pressures, administrative quotas, stipulations, regulations, and conflicting expectations.
Dr. Koop calls the doctor-patient relationship "...the heart and soul of medicine." Making this a priority in medical schools across the nation will help reinforce the world's best medical care with the most medical caring.
Lectures at Dartmouth
In partnership with the Nathan Smith Pre-medical Society, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, and the DMS Office of Student Affairs, the Koop Institute presented two lectures on Thursday, January 22, 1998, one at DHMC and one at the Rockefeller Center. These presentations, entitled "Medicine for Fun Not Funds," by Dr. Patch Adams, embodied the standards of caring that are the goal of the Harold Wade Lecture Series. Dr. Adams is a physician, author, professional clown, and founder/director of the Gesundheit Institute.