President Gessner, Executive Vice President Cornell, Fellow Society
Officers, Members and Staff of both my home Suffolk District and the entire
Society, Family, Friends and Guests –
I thank you for your support and am honored to be the 135th
President of the Massachusetts Medical Society. With recognition of the serious responsibility that goes with the title,
let me assure you that the goals of the medical society, both members and staff,
are also my goals: superb care for our patients, fast access to quality evaluation
and treatment, reduction in the cost of medications as well as the cost of
medical care in general, and support of the physician’s efforts, whether in
solo practice or a large group, community or academic, rural or urban. The
burdens of over-regulation, in the presence of complex and unwieldy
documentation systems, absence of tort reform, and for some, an excessive
education debt, are all having a negative impact not only on the health and
well-being of our patients, but on that of our physicians themselves. Clearly, the status quo is not acceptable. This must change.
With your help, we will continue, and build upon, the outstanding
efforts of my immediate predecessors Drs. Dennis Dimitri and Jim Gessner, in
addressing each of these issues with insightfulness and alacrity. While not minimizing the seriousness of the
problems ahead, we do try to keep our sense of humor about us while dealing
with these concerns. In a lighter vein,
the situation I now find myself in as President does bring to mind a comment
made by the proctor of my freshman medical school histology exam. As he handed
out the blue books, he said, “now don’t be uptight, don’t clutch – this is much
too important!”
For those of you who are wondering what sort of President
you have elected, a brief thumbnail sketch is in order. Born in Baltimore, and
raised in Camden, New Jersey, I grew up where my father, Jerome R. Dorkin MD, PBK
and AOA Johns Hopkins class of 1944, had returned home after military service.
There, he and my mother raised a family (my younger sister Joellyn and me) while Dad practiced medicine in an office attached
to the front of our house.
My father was the quintessential solo practitioner
internist/cardiologist. He was always
available, always thinking about his patients, always making sure they never
felt rushed in his office, and constantly reading/publishing papers in order to
be a better doctor. One could not have
asked for a finer father or a more outstanding role model. I sought to emulate
him, attending both his undergraduate and medical school alma maters, but then
went in another direction, finishing a Pediatric Residency at Hopkins. I then was very lucky that I met a Worcester
native son, Dr. Richard Talamo, who, along with Dr. Beryl Rosenstein, was one
of my Baltimore mentors. A Harvard
College and Boston University Medical School graduate, Dr. Talamo interested me
in the medical problems of the respiratory system in infants and children. It
was he who sent me up to Children’s for a Fellowship in Pulmonary Diseases and
Cystic Fibrosis, and I arrived in Boston during the summer of 1977.
My original intention was always to return south to either
Philadelphia or Baltimore after two years of training, but in Boston – well, I
met a girl. With me tonight and my wife of 38 years, Kathleen was a graduate of
Radcliffe College in Cambridge and the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia. I met her when she was Principal Harpist with the Opera Company
of Boston. Kathy was clearly much smarter than I was (except for perhaps that
one lapse when she actually agreed to marry me), and my fate was sealed. Also with us tonight is Kathy’s father, Dr.
Oscar Moreno, and his wife Terry. Saturday night the family will gather to
celebrate Dr. Moreno’s 90th birthday. I must admit a certain amount
of trepidation when I asked him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He considered
this for a moment, and then said, “ …don’t be hasty – make me an offer for the
whole girl.” I knew then that I was going to get along just fine with my prospective
father-in-law!
Our daughter and son, Dr. Molly Dorkin and Dr. Robert Dorkin,
are with us tonight as well. Both children have exceeded our greatest hopes for
them and are outdistancing their parents in accomplishments, which of course is
the goal of every family. We follow
their aspirations, efforts and achievements with love and pride. They, along
with their mother, have been nothing but supportive of my career caring for
patients in the hospital and clinic as well as my goals in academic medicine at
Tufts and Harvard. All three have been tolerant of my time away from home, and
unstinting in their love, for which I can never repay them. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I
must tell you that we remained in Boston in part because every time I got a
generous job offer elsewhere in the country, Kathy would consider it carefully,
and then ask me, if I considered taking the job, to “please write often.” I got the message – we were staying here.
One also cannot get very far without good friends. At our
table, along with his wife Ann, is Dr. Steven Sloane of Allentown, Pa. Steve
and I have been inseparable since primary school in Camden, sharing hobbies and
memories, and serving as Best Man at each other’s wedding. He is someone from
whom I have learned much, especially how to buckle down and study. In addition, Kathy and I were once told that the
parents of our children’s school-chums would become our close friends as well;
the presence tonight of Dr. and Mrs. Fred Server, and Mrs. Nancy Gordon (whose
husband Mark at this moment is at 30,000 feet out over the Atlantic heading
into Logan), supports that. If the test of true friendship is tolerating the
foibles of others, then the fact that all of them still laugh at my terrible puns
stands as confirmation.
Finally, let me close by relating to you some advice I got
from my father. On my wall at home is a certificate given to Dad by the Camden
County Medical Society for 50 years of service to the community. When I embarked on a medical career, he said,
“Son, wherever you settle down, get involved with your state medical society.
It is the only local common voice we have, and we must all stick together for
the common good.” Over the years I have
come to appreciate all that the Society has accomplished through its diligence
and hard work. Much of it, like the bottom 89% of any iceberg, is not visible
to the eye, but were it not for the actions of the Society it would be even
more difficult to practice medicine in the Commonwealth than it is now. While continuing to work harder for our
physicians and patients, we will also try to make sure that all of you have
input into how the Society regards and tackles the issues before us. The results of what we collectively have
done in the past and present, as well as what we are going to do in the future to
address all of the problems I listed earlier, must, and will, bring about change for the better.
We are charged with protecting the health and well-being of
our fellow men, women and children, as well as preserving an unfettered and
supportive environment in which to practice medicine, a most noble and
honorable profession. This charge must be carried out successfully. However, we
also have to remember something I learned in Residency – there are no points given
in this world for being right if you cannot make it work. With the help of everyone in this room, and
many who are not here with us tonight, we will make it work. Thank you.
