At 76, Dr. Edward Rosenbaum hardly looks like a man to inspire a performance by William Hurt, but his account of getting a taste of his own medicine as a cancer patient was the basis for "The Doctor."
Rosenbaum, and the movie version of his story, carry the same message: Doctors often lose touch with the human side of their profession. They don't understand the frustration, suffering, humiliation and fear patients experience."We as doctors are isolated from society, and it starts in our early training, when we take the sciences and mathematics instead of the humanities," Rosenbaum said in an interview this week.
After intense competition to be admitted to medical school, the prospective doctor finds himself in a unique group.
"The very first day of medical school we go into an anatomy lab and stick a knife into that cadaver," Rosenbaum said. "That's not a normal human act. And once we do that we're different. We develop a shell around ourselves."
The isolation intensifies when a doctor starts his practice, he said.
"We socialize among ourselves. We're in a better economic group. Most of us are politically conservative. We really don't realize what the average person is thinking," Rosenbaum said.
The movie is based on Rosenbaum's autobiographical book "A Taste of My Own Medicine."
Rosenbaum began private practice in 1948. He founded and served as chief of the rheumatology clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University.
Years later, in the mid-1980s, he became a patient.
He complained about a persistent sore throat. After a quick examination, a colleague told him he probably had a cold. The condition worsened, but Rosenbaum, like many other patients, didn't return.
Finally, his wife made an appointment for him and the same doctor suggested cortisone for allergies. The hoarseness didn't go away.
Rosenbaum's jaw began to hurt. He went to a dentist, who pronounced the problem an overbite. Two teeth-grinding sessions didn't help. Two months later, he underwent exploratory surgery. Tests of tissue showed no cancer. But the soreness persisted.
Rosenbaum was told the problem was psychological. He was sent to a speech therapist. Still, the hoarseness continued. Finally, the medical director of the speech clinic examined him with a tiny camera inserted in his throat.
There, hidden from view in the earlier examinations, was a cancerous tumor.
In the movie, the doctor played by Hurt is transformed from an arrogant, unfeeling physician to a caring, sensitive person.
Rosenbaum, who is now free of cancer, said his experience as a patient made him realize there are many things he would have done differently in his career.
"People said to me, `Weren't you upset? Didn't you want to sue for malpractice? Weren't you angry?"' he said. "I never was. You know why? Because everything I was accusing my colleagues of I myself had been guilty of."
Rosenbaum's 1988 book has none of the romantic details of the movie. There were no problems with his wife and no emotional entanglement with a woman dying of a brain tumor. And Rosenbaum, who retired in 1988, was not a heart surgeon, as Hurt's character is.
And a colleague, Dr. Joseph Matarazzo, said Rosenbaum needed no transformation from arrogance to understanding.
"He didn't have a patient in Portland who won't tell you he was the most caring doctor they'd ever had," said Matarazzo, chairman of the university's medical psychology department.
Rosenbaum's book was re-released in paperback this year under the title "The Doctor."
Rosenbaum said doctors are realizing they must pay attention to the human side of their profession, what he calls "the art of medicine."
The movie and book are symptoms of the change, Rosenbaum said.
"I don't think we're starting a revolution," he said. "I think we're saying, `Right on. Let's get on with it.' "