Note to readers: Dr. Arnold P Gold passed away the week before our interview took place. This interview is dedicated to his memory.

I’m so pleased to have on the show Dr. Dorothy Levine, Director of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. Levine earned her bachelors at Princeton, her MD at Albert Einstein, and did her residency in pediatrics at Columbia Presbyterian. Today she leads organizational and strategic planning efforts of the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

What is the Arnold P Gold Foundation, and can you give me a little background as to its founding? [1:21]

The Arnold P Gold Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to infuse and sustain our healthcare system with a culture of compassion, caring, and respect for patients and practitioners. It began in 1988 when Dr. Arnold Gold realized he had to do something to combat the depersonalization of the patient/physician relationship that he saw developing in front of his eyes. He was a pediatric neurologist who taught students and saw patients, and he saw this distancing developing. His effort was helped enormously by the passionate and seemingly limitless energy of his wife Dr. Sandra Gold. Donations from physician friends and grateful patients allowed the dream to become a reality. Over the years sympathetic administrators have joined in and provided financial support, and most recently reach has grown from the creation of a corporate council of healthcare-related companies. The aim is to maximize the impact the organization has on goals to keep all patient activities as empathetic as possible.

Why do you think the problem developed? [3:19]

In the old, old days there was often not much physicians could do - there was lots of hand holding, sitting by a patient’s bedside, empathy, and compassion. As the power to change the course of the illness through diagnostics grew, I think doctors got very busy doing those things – ordering tests, interpreting them, and the patient got further away. Then you have the managed care company or insurer. It used to be that doctors would hand the bill directly to the patient and negotiations for payment would happen directly between those two parties. When insurers got involved, the patients suddenly seemed to not even be yours anyway, and then electronic medical records put the finishing touch on this depersonalization, as the doctor is very well meaning but busy looking at a computer screen.

How did you get involved with the Gold Foundation? [5:42]

I was a lucky pediatric resident at Columbia Presbyterian Babies Hospital from 1980-1983, studying to be a pediatrician and I met Dr. Gold, who was one of my professors of pediatric neurology. He was one of my most beloved physicians on the faculty there. There can be an emphasis on lack of compassion with doctors, and he absolutely was not that way. He was a wonderful man and I periodically sent my patients with the most difficult neurological problems to him to diagnose. When I retired several years ago I met Dr. Levin, President and CEO of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation who had stepped in after Dr. Gold retired, and he encouraged me to take the position.

What is humanism in medicine? [8:41]

People spend a lot of time trying to identify and explain what it is and why it is or isn’t there. It should be an easy answer, but I think it’s present when all members of the healthcare team, from the doctor to the person who cleans up the vomit, treat their patients with dignity and compassion....