The Science of Medicine and Dr. Debakey

The field medicine recently lost a true pioneer in the healthcare field.

Dr. Michael E. DeBakey died at the age of 99 and was responsible for some of the most innovative procedures of our lifetime, including bypass surgery.

Sure he got some publicity, but compared to some celebrities and socialites who die, his passing went relatively unnoticed when you think of the impact he had on hundreds of thousands of lives.

When Dr. DeBakey began his career, most of us can’t imagine what practicing medicine was like.

Many of us cannot remember only having glass IV bottles, a handful of antibiotics and other medications and certainly cannot fathom a cardiac intensive care unit with no ventilators or an iron lung and no bypass surgery, angioplasties and stents.

With pioneers like Dr. DeBakey, the science of medicine moved at incredible speeds and with its progress, came great changes.

Nursing is much more technical and less hands-on than it used to be which has its pros and cons.
Machines now give us digital images and vital signs when before it was all manual and more labor intensive. Beds can now position patients automatically rather than manually turning patients.

All of the progress has helped with patient care and it has improved safety in some cases; more effective in others.

But have physicians and nurses lost something along the way?

Automating procedures, vitals, and other routines has eliminated those minutes that used to be spent at the bedside or in the room chatting with the patient and family.

Automation has eliminated the return visits that were required because the manual methods had to be constantly repeated.

Each of those visits gave doctors and nurses a chance to check the patient and make another quick assessment.

Although we have made tremendous strides and advances, I wonder if Dr. DeBakey ever felt like we were losing touch.

The science of medicine continues to advance, but the “art of medicine” may be a dying relic.

Dr. DeBakey and his fellow inventors and pioneers have given the world tremendous gifts, but we need to remember that sometimes, progress in one area may cause a decline in others.

There are times we need to sit down and see what parts of the past we should keep!