The Content of Their Character

1992: an urban emergency room, the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. It was the middle of my second year in medicine residency. There was a basket full of yellow-dot charts. These were the patients who always seemed to come in at 3 a.m. with colds, back pain for 6 months, and other minor problems. Our attending was Dr. Johnson. Not much older than most of the residents, he always looked like he had slept in his clothes (often he had) and usually he had 2 days' worth of facial hair. He was efficient, if a little rough around the edges, and was beloved by the housestaff because he protected them. Dr. Johnson went to the waiting room and started flipping through the yellow-dot charts.

“Attention, the following people will not be seen until the morning: Smith, Hernandez, Wilson, Hernandez—in fact, anyone named Hernandez won't be seen until tomorrow.” At the time, we thought this was fantastic because Dr. Johnson was making our shift easier.

1998: I was a rheumatologist working in the pharmaceutical industry. A half-day per week, I served as a volunteer faculty member in a rheumatology teaching clinic, part of the university's group practice. Amanda Gonzalez was a 26-year-old woman with lupus, pulmonary hypertension, and the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). She walked with great pain because …