TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Todd Savitt, medical historian and ethicist, and Dr. Clifton Meador, medical reformer and bestselling author, will be the featured presenters at the fourth annual Susan and Gaylon McCollough Medical Scholars Forum Feb. 3-4 on The University of Alabama campus.
The McCollough Medical Scholars Forum, sponsored by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, was established by Alabama physician Dr. Gaylon McCollough and his wife, Susan. Both are UA alumni.
The Forum’s purpose is to give students an understanding of the importance of the scientific and humanistic aspects of healthcare. High school students, UA pre-health professions students, and past forum participants will join UA faculty representing diverse disciplines for the event.
Meador and Savitt will jointly present “Diagnosing Symptoms of Unknown Origin: Beyond the Biochemical Model.” The two will incorporate a “medical reader’s theatre” into their presentation to reconsider the conventional biochemical approach to medicine. Their presentations, to be held at 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 3 and 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 4 in 205 Smith Hall, are free and open to the public.
The medical readers’ theatre is a performance-based presentation in which short stories about medical cases are presented as a script. Students act out the stories. The presentation provides case examples of real life occurrence that raise social and ethical issues. The presentation is followed by a discussion with the actors and audience.
Meador, a steadfast advocate for the uninsured, received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1955. He served as dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Alabama from 1968 to 1973.
Throughout his career, Meador has been an initiator of medical reform. He has long been involved in health care reform and envisions a health care system that would be less expensive to run and much more thorough. Meador said this interest in medical care reform began early on in his career when he noticed that many patients were being treated for illnesses they did not have.
He realized the importance of being a true physician with an understanding of the scientific but also with the capacity to communicate with patients and comprehend illnesses from their point of view.
“It’s a disappointment that medicine has gotten so far off track,” he said. “And I must have somehow been a part of that. I am not any better than anyone else. Somewhere medicine went from doctor to patient, to very high technology. Technology costs money and it went into a business. It will always be some sort of business, but you can make it more efficient.”
Another major reform he initiated while at UA School of Medicine was organizing the Medical Information System by Telephone which created a system for physicians to communicate with each other with questions about patients and their diagnoses. It was discovered that the infant death rate fell in the counties that implemented the system.
Meador is the author of eight books as well as of many articles; he is perhaps best known for “A Little Book of Doctors’ Rules,” “Med School: A Collection of Stories About Medical School 1951-1955” and, most recently, his best-selling work, “Symptoms of Unknown Origin: A Medical Odyssey.”
In this book, a chronicle of patients’ illnesses through case studies, he shares a series of medical case studies and shows how he came to rebuff a strict observance to the existing biomolecular model of disease and its separation of mind and body.
Reviewers in the Journal of the American Medical Association have said of the book, “We owe Dr. Clifton Meador . . . a debt of gratitude for teaching us techniques to more effectively listen to the stories our patients want to tell.”
Meador is currently clinical professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and Meharry Medical College as well as executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance.
Savitt founded and coordinated the medical readers’ theatre at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine where he serves as professor in the department of medical humanities. He is an expert in African-American medical history and the medical history of the American West and South.
He has written or co-edited four books, including “Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia.”
Savitt’s published articles include the history of sickle-cell anemia, sudden infant death syndrome, use of African-Americans for medical experimentation and the entry of black physicians into the American medical profession.
Savitt is chairman for the National Institutes of Health’s medical history grants panel and serves as secretary/treasurer of the American Association for the History of Medicine.
The College of Arts and Sciences is Alabama’s largest liberal arts college and the University’s largest division with 350 faculty and 6,600 students.
Contact
Nelda Sanker, Communications Specialist, College of Arts and Sciences, 205/348-8539