"We get no points for doing this". Several members of the BJH ethics committee have made sure I understand. Why then do individuals do more in their work than that for which they are evaluated or compensated? Why do they volunteer? What sustains them? Let me tell you a story about one of my very special friends - Sheldon Korones, MD.
The occasion was the 1978 dinner honoring Shelly with the Mid-South Hadassah Humanitarian Award. After completing his pediatrics residency in 1954 at Boston General Hospital, Shelly and his wife moved to Memphis where he joined a medical school friend in a private pediatric practice. He spent his mornings in the inner-city Charity Hospital; his afternoons in his outlying private ("carriage") practice. His morning patients (babies burdened by profound socio-economic disadvantages) were dying in infancy at more than twice the rate of his afternoon patients (babies born to privileged families). Memphians remained entrenched in discrimination and in injustices when Shelly made the decision in 1967 to leave his private practice in order to devote himself completely to his Charity Hospital patients.
Shelly announced 1 July 1968--only a few weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr., had been murdered-- his intention to create at Memphis's Charity Hospital an intensive care unit for critically ill newborns. A physician with an uneasy conscience who dared to dream. A city polarized and embarrassed. A medical school and city hospital with neither plan nor funds for newborn intensive care. Skeptical local philanthropists with whom Shelly shared his vision in vain. And yet three years later-- with the support of the local media, a persistent reporter, some diligent nurses, an encouraging Pediatrics Department chair, a strategically placed Children's Bureau official in Washington, a courageous rabbi, a few faithful friends, and an unwavering family--The Newborn Center had been established.
The dinner's emcee asked Shelly to explain what had motivated him to leave a lucrative private practice and what had sustained him as he faced barrier after barrier. Shelly's answer- "My grandfather's toes." After an effective pause, he then took the audience back to 1930 on New York City's Lower East Side.
Six-year-old Shelly is nestled in front of a Fada Radio, listening attentively to the day's episodes of Jack Amstrong. His stubble-bearded grandfather Nachman - who had fled with his family Czarist Russia in 1901 -- locks the dark green doors of his nearby blacksmith shop. Walking around the corner, he climbs a flight of steps to the landing of their modest five-room tenement home. Young Shelly eagerly meets his grandfather in front of the dining room buffet. With unequal strides, they make their way to the living room where Nachman settles into his chair. The stocky lad begins his nightly ritual. Pulling off the heavy work boots and socks, Shelly runs his fingers over each foot's single chunk of nailless flesh that had once been separate toes and pleads with his grandfather to repeat yet again the painful memories always just a thought away. Conversing in Yiddish, Shelly and his grandfather reenact an old Russian proverb that a child's education begins with his grandfather's education. "Papa, tell me again what happened to your toes."
Nachman's thoughts drift back to 1880s Czarist Russia, to the peasant village of Mogilyov. Jewish parents in the hundreds of villages like Mogilyov stopped at nothing to keep their boys from being snatched by the marauding Cossacks who enforced the Czar's harsh conscription laws. Conscription for Jewish boys meant more than military service. It meant being brutally stripped of their identity in far away military schools. They were severely beaten, forced to violate dietary traditions, and even denied food. "My son, Cossacks chased me. I hid in the forest for a long time. My toes froze off in my shoes."
What is your story? What caused you to find room for 'the ethics committee' in an already crowded schedule without compromising the quality of your assigned work? What sustains you?
Think about it. Perhaps talk to a co-worker.
