Page 36 - NEWSLETTER_27

E.O.E Newsletter | www.huanet.gr
36
During those three years, I spent seven months doing cardiac and thoracic surgery. So, when I went into urology, I was very comfortable making a thoraco- abdominal incision and working around major vessels. Actually, there was never a time when I had to call another specialist into the operating room to assist me. That type of formative experience doesn’t occur today. At Hopkins we still do many urinary diversions and residents become very familiar with intra-abdominal major surgery. We have the added advantage of having an excellent pediatric urology unit. Reconstruction for exstrophy of the bladder is one of the most common operations that we perform. So, our residents get a lot of experience in doing open surgery but this exposure is difficult for many programs to offer.
T.S.: What do you advise young residents who want to pursue a career in Urology?
P.W.: I am not an evangelist; I am not a missionary. I don’t go out trying to change people’s religion. But when I talk to medical students and they ask me: “What about urology? What’s the advantage?”, I reply “If you want to be in a field where you are the primary care physician and you also want to be a surgeon and possibly carry out research, I don’t think there is any better field than urology”.
F.N.: You have written two books entitled
“The Prostate: A Guide for Men and the Women Who Love Them” and “Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer”, that have helped a lot of men with prostate cancer and their families to learn many things about their disease. What was the driving force that made you write these books? If you could pick one quote from your books, what would that be?
P.W.: It wasn’t money! People say: “You are going to retire. You write all these books.”. You don’t make much money from a 15- or 20-dollar book. The woman I wrote this book with, Janet Worthington, is a wonderful person. She is a science writer. I thought whatever money we made; she should get it. I did it because I wanted to share my vast experience, to help as many people as I could. And it worked. For the past 20 years, my book has been Amazon’s best-selling book for people with prostate cancer. That’s why I did it.
So, what is my favorite quote? When I teach medical students every Friday, I begin the clinic by using the quote of Francis Peabody. He was a professor at Harvard, who in 1927 developed stomach cancer and died that year. But during the year before he died, he gave a lecture at Harvard Medical School class, entitled “The care of the patient”, which was based on
ΣΥΝΈΝΤΈΥΞΗ