Did you ever have a teacher who changed your course or your life? Someone whose habits, actions, insights and integrity made you want to follow in their footsteps? Dell Medical School students share personal stories of profound influencers in this blog series.
All members of the Dell Medical School community are welcome to submit stories of teachers or mentors whose character moved them and made a difference in their development. This story is shared by Yousef Nofal, student at Dell Med.
“Listen closely; they only teach this back home.”
I have always thought of my father as an “old school” physician. A proud curmudgeon, he once gave me a thirty-minute lecture on how to properly palpate the spleen before a tangent about how the “new physicians of this generation” hand out CT scans like it is a giveaway on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He always loved to share his passion for medicine, which is how I became acquainted with medical journals at a young age as he continuously quizzed me on various “Picture of the Month” sections. He never forgets to remind me that my twelve-year-old self once tried to diagnose psoriasis as “elbow dandruff.”
A practicing pediatrician, my father initially trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon in Egypt before leaving his career as a surgeon behind to pursue the “American Dream,” which involved working as the world’s most overqualified pizza delivery boy to fund his residency applications. He ultimately landed in Mississippi, a place he never heard of, to practice pediatrics, a field he never planned on going into. Fast forward thirty years and he has now become a staple in the Mississippi Delta community — practically a celebrity in town, constantly being ambushed with hugs by his patients at our local Walmart.
When I began my own medical training, I quickly learned that my background growing up in rural Mississippi allowed me to see the practice of medicine from a different angle. Growing up I had only ever seen skin disorders, such as eczema, on black patients. Yet, every medical textbook I perused and every photo on Google showed eczema on white skin. I would be on the wards and read countless notes in which the physical exam of the skin of a black patient would state “no erythema” when indeed there was some level of erythema. I noticed patients would be told to have someone pick them up from the hospital when in fact nobody in their family owned a car. In clinic, these same patients may be counseled to “eat better and exercise more” without providing specific recommendations on how to substitute typical foods for healthier, culturally appropriate alternatives. Instead, these patients would return to clinic and be labeled as “non-adherent,” reinforcing negative stereotypes and implicit bias that we as humans all struggle with.
I have always thought of my father as an “old school” physician. But behind him quizzing me from those “Picture of the Month” sections, there he was reading the latest edition of those journals cover-to-cover in order to stay up to date on the latest research in order to ensure that his patients received the highest quality of care. He was never against technology and imaging but instead was for the practice of value-based and patient-centered care in order to avoid unnecessary interventions in his patients. Despite the fact that I grew up in Mississippi, my father knew more about Southern food and culture than me as he spent time learning about the types of food his patients ate and the family dynamics that could contribute to his patients’ illnesses. He kept a photo album on his phone of different rashes and skin disorders on black skin in order to educate any students that rotated by. He advocated for his patients simply because that was the way he was taught “back home.”
During these unprecedented times marked by a global pandemic and social unrest, physicians are needed more than ever as advocates for their patients. So when my father tells me to listen closely, I listen. I listen so that I can make sure to teach this here, in my home.
The Kern National Network for Caring & Character in Medicine (KNN) is a national network of seven medical schools dedicated to advance caring and character in medicine with the goal of promoting human flourishing. Guided by the principles of caring and character, the KNN provides a framework for training physicians, strengthening joy in medicine and improving health to promote human flourishing within, across and beyond the medical profession to positively impact individuals and communities in our society.
This initiative was made possible through support from the Kern National Network for Caring & Character in Medicine through an investment from the Kern Family Trust and Kern Family Foundation.