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Saturday, August 09, 2003He and his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg, settled into a family practice in Vermont. So does Time: Dean, a family practitioner, had applied to residency programs at highly competitive hospitals in New York and Washington but was rejected by all of them. His fourth choice was the University of Vermont, in Burlington, which has just 40,000 citizens but is the state's largest city" But Dr. Dean isn’t a family physician. He’s an internist. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it isn’t. Internists specialize in adult general medicine. They don’t treat kids, and they don’t deliver babies. Family physicians treat children and adults and they’re trained to deliver babies. There’s a world of difference. Which makes it very odd to see the photograph in Newsweek's print version of Howard Dean performing a physical exam on a child. Maybe a reporter for a national news magazine can’t be expected to know the difference. All they realize is that he's not in one of the smart, prosperous specialties. But doctor Dean surely knows the difference. Shouldn’t he correct the misperception? Or at least be a little more careful of his photo-op choices? Mrs. Dr. Dean: Newsweek makes the same mistake about Mrs. Dean’s specialty. She, too, is an internist. She also seems to be refreshingly honest. She'd rather be with her patients than on the campaign trail: “I like watching politics, and I think it does have an effect on our lives, but I’m not a participant,” she says. “I’m much more comfortable on a one-to-one basis with my patients.” posted by Sydney on 8/09/2003 10:32:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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