To finish out my complaining about Dr. Oz for this cycle, I want to go back to the New Yorker article on him that appeared earlier this year.
A quote from the article: “As Oz likes to say, Marcus Welby—the kindly, accessible, but straight-talking television doctor—is dead.”
Assuming he really said this, this is a great example of media-centric, coastal-centric, blatant ignorance.
Marcus Welby is alive and well, reincarnated as some of the finest physicians one could hope to meet.
Stephanie Doenges, MD, has served in a remote jungle valley in Papua, New Guinea since graduating from the John Peter Smith Family Medicine residency program over five years ago. She delivers babies including C-sections, runs a basic ICU, and helps staff a large clinic/hospital operation on constrained resources. She provides this care with the enlarged heart of a Christian servant.
Randy Lee, MD, is a family physician who has served his hometown of Hamilton, Texas since he graduated from JPS almost 20 years ago. Under his tutelage, his practice has grown to a group of about six family physicians, the hospital has grown, and it’s now in the black. The hospital decided to stop delivering babies about 10 years ago, but his group provides a large range of other services: clinic care, hospital care, ER coverage, colonoscopies and EGDs, and other minor surgeries.
Doug Curran, MD, is a family physician who has served the community of Athens, Texas since graduated from JPS over 30 years ago. His partners now include 10 family physicians who care for the patients of Athens and surrounding communities (including – and for you non-Texans you’ll either love or hate this name (and I’m not making it up) – Gun Barrel City). He still delivers babies and for several years has delivered babies from babies he delivered 20+ years ago. He and his partners provide as full a gamut of services as you could imagine. Dr. Curran even still does hysterectomies and a few other advanced gynecological procedures.
No physician in New York City or LA provides this complete a menu of services. Few physicians in these cities are as committed to a community of patients as these men and women. Dr. Oz would never run into these special physicians in his daily life, but it is outrageously ignorant of him to assume that New York City norms define the rest of America.
One more reason for real family physicians to be offended by Dr. Oz. His arrogance that because he is a “brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon” he must know more about primary care than we simple family docs is exactly why Americans should consider him just a TV doc trying to be sensational and entertaining and make a buck.
Absolutely. Plus just his presence reinforces the misinformation that family physicians are stuck in their place because they weren’t qualified to be a CV surgeon.