Richard I. Levin
An elderly woman and her middle-age daughter sat together in the examining room. The kindly oncologist, upon finishing his examination, turned to the daughter and asked, “How has she been feeling?” Somewhat taken aback, the octogenarian responded, “Excuse me doctor…I may have cancer but my ears and my brain still work. If you want to know how I am, you can ask me directly.”
Though many physicians are sought-after for their technical skills, once an individual is in an exam room, it is often the patient-doctor relationship that comes to bear. Our goal at The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is to nurture and protect the human side of medicine. A goal that grows ever more important as medical science and technological capability grow at a staggering rate.
In the past we have focused our efforts to humanize medicine on celebrating and encouraging humanism in physicians in training. With the recent birth of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation Research Institute (RI) we are now poised to collect, conduct, and disseminate research that demonstrates the additional value of compassionate care:
- improved health outcomes;
- lower healthcare costs;
- fewer malpractice suits; and
- decreased levels of physician burnout.
We are excited to share the knowledge we are gaining, the resources we find insightful, and the voices we are listening to as we humanize the practice of medicine. We invite you to contact us about adding your own voice to this ongoing dialog about the human side of medicine.
Sincerely,
Richard I. Levin
President and CEO
Richard I. Levin, MD is the President and CEO of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation. He is concurrently a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at McGill and a Professor Emeritus of Medicine in the Leon H. Charney Division of Cardiology at New York University.
Dr. Levin is a scholar, educational innovator, scientist, inventor, company founder, teacher, lecturer, and essayist. The author of numerous papers, he has lectured widely in the United States and abroad. Dr. Levin’s scientific interests include endothelial cell biology, the prevention of atherothrombotic events, the reformation of academic health centers for the support of implementation science and personalized medicine, and the role of the new information technologies in medical education and practice and their emerging effect on humanism in medicine.
