OUR AMAZING ALUMNI FATEMAH MAMDANI DAN MATASSA AMANDA GANZA COLLIN CREANGE
what is
empathy? Why
Care? Since 2004, the Humanism Center has been training physicians to ask and answer these questions. BY EVE JACOBS
A young woman with lymphoma who speaks no English—and understands just a little—lies alone in a bed in a busy urban hospital. As doctors, nurses, residents, interns, students, staff, therapists and other workers move purposefully past her door, sometimes stopping in for a moment, the patient’s anxiety and confusion rise. Despite family visits, she feels alone and scared. Into this room walks another young woman. She introduces herself as a third-year medical student, but quickly realizes that they have no language in common. The student speaks only a few words of Spanish; the patient speaks only Spanish. Despite this barrier, the student DAN MATASSA
was not your “ordinary” 16-year-old. His
strongest memories of that time of life involve the insides of an ambulance with sirens screaming through trafficked streets. “Being a volunteer EMT and caring for people drove me to medicine,” he says. NJMS was at the top of his list—the fit between the humanism program and his commitment to community volunteer work was perfect. As a humanism scholar, he participated in “All E.A.R.S.”— a program that matches medical student-visitors with patients who are terminally ill, lonely, and facing long hospitalizations. Matassa calls the experience “eye-opening.” Internal medicine “felt right” to him. The opportunity to develop long-term relationships with patients and their families, treat multiple conditions at one time, thereby impacting a patient’s overall outlook, and teach patients all appeal to him. Inspired by Lisa Dever, MD, He would like to develop expertise in TB and immigrant health.
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Here are four new alumni, ready to take on medicine with a humanistic touch: Amanda Ganza, Collin Creange, Dan Matassa, and Fatemah Mamdani.
carves out an hour from her frantic schedule—every morning for a month—to sit with the patient, hold her hand and keep her company. (This is not among the many requirements imposed by the demanding third-year curriculum.) Despite their inability to converse, the student knows that the woman feels better because of the visits; they have connected and even communicated in nonverbal ways. On the last day of her month-long rotation in internal medicine, the medical student is rewarded with a big hug from the patient, who also takes out her cell phone to show pictures of her baby. This experience, says the student, was among the most memorable of medical school. There is no doubt that the relationship between doctor and patient—based on trust, communication and an emotional connection—has eroded in our technical, fast-paced, cost-driven health care world. When the humanistic elements of medicine diminish, both sides lose. Not only do patients feel “dehumanized” but doctors feel cheated of a primary motivation for entering the profession. That’s where the humanism in medicine program comes in: to re-introduce “patient-centered care,” rather than case- or disease-centered care, to new physicians. In 2004, the Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine at NJMS was founded with a $3.2 million gift from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. ANDREW HANENBERG
