Bedside Manners: The Art of Practicing Medicine

By W. Hugh Spruell, MD

Perhaps the most important aspect of the practice of medicine is the manner in which a physician interacts with his or her patient. This is called Bedside Manner. You can be the most intelligent, you can have the nicest facility, you can have the best equipment but your practice will still suffer if you do not have Bedside Manners.

This book delves into the art of practicing medicine or Bedside Manners. You will discover the essentials necessary to win and keep patients. After following the directions in this book, you will be given the tools necessary to build a practice and live handsomely off referrals.

This book is not only for physicians but also other medical personnel who have direct contact with patients. It is time we take the Oath of Medicine seriously and begin to give the patients the care, follow-up and compassion they deserve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Center for Self-Actualization, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984626670

Book preview

BEDSIDE MANNERS

The Art of Practicing Medicine

W. Hugh Spruell, M.D.

W. Hugh Spruell, MD

Copyright W. Hugh Spruell 20110

Published by The Center for Self-Actualization, Inc.

Publishing at Smashwords

Published by The Center for Self-Actualization, Inc.

Publishing Division

P.O. Box 98466

Atlanta, Georgia 30359

www.selfactualized.org

Copyright © 2011 by W. Hugh Spruell, MD

Cover Designed by Graphic Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Spruell, Hugh W.

Bedside Manner: The Art of Practicing Medicine

ISBN 978-0-9846266-7-0

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without written permission from the author. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

About the Author

William Hugh Spruell, Jr., was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Russellville, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in medicine. He accepted a commission as Captain in the United States Air Force to train in aerospace medicine, receiving an Outstanding Service Award.

Hugh completed his residency in medicine and his fellowship in rheumatology at Emory University, where he was Chief Resident and Instructor in Medicine. Hugh has been board certified in medicine and rheumatology for over thirty-five years. He founded a private practice in internal medicine and rheumatology in 1972, and is still practicing today.

In 1974, Hugh accepted an ongoing appointment as Medical Director of Agnes Scott College. He has actively supported the Arthritis Foundation for thirty-five years. An active Methodist, for the past twenty years, Hugh has been Medical Director of Honduras Outreach, traveling to Honduras twice annually to minister to and treat poverty-stricken families in Central America. Hugh and his wife Nancy have supported several students from Honduras, sending them to universities and nursing and medical schools.

In 2007, he received the Julius McCurdy Citizenship Award from the DeKalb Medical Society. Author of several medical treatises, Hugh has also published a collection of poetry and a remembrance book about his youngest son, Brian. Hugh and his wife Nancy reside in Lilburn, Georgia. They boast about their five children, six grandchildren—and counting.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my patients who taught me good bedside manners. Thanks to my father who showed me at an early age how to interact with patients. Thanks to Vanessa Sandidge who typed the manuscript for me. Thanks to my son, Blue, who helped with editing and gave me suggestions as I wrote this book, and my nephew Charlie Mason, who drew the cartoons in this book.

Finally, thanks to The Center for Self-Actualization, Inc. and my publisher Deena Jones who has guided me through this and previous books, and my editor Pam Ryan, whose editing suggestions show heart and soul and add greatness to my writing.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my father, Dr. William Hugh Spruell, Sr. who died at the young age of forty-two in 1951. Because of his caring way, he continues to be remembered as a wonderful doctor by patients who, even to this day, sixty years after his untimely death, comment on his extraordinary bedside manner.

Foreword

My father was a small town physician in Russellville, Alabama. He had the best bedside manner of any physician I have ever known in all my years of practice. I made many house calls with him back when house calls were common. I observed his caring ways and his impeccable patient interaction.

He would quickly change his mood or behavior to meet the emotional needs of his patients as the situation dictated. He was truly the epitome of appropriate bedside manners. I knew his manners worked well because of the enormous number of patients that I met who loved him and often expressed to me how caring and gentle he was.

He died at age forty-two, but even to this day, I meet people who talk of him fifty years after he is gone. As promised in the Hippocratic Oath, my father was respected while he lived and remembered with affection thereafter.

I had always wanted to be a doctor, but I had never actually voiced it. I remember distinctly the first time I ever said the words; I was around eight at the time. My father and I were walking along Main Street in Russellville, Alabama one Saturday afternoon and a man approached us. He and my father obviously knew each other and they carried on a brief conversation, to which I paid no attention. When they were about to part, the man turned to me and said, Hey, little Hugh. How are you doing?

I replied, and then he asked me, Hugh, what are you going to be when you grow up?

Without hesitation I said, "I’m going to be a doctor like