Stony Brook hosts pols at 'doctor for a day' program

Michael Fitzpatrick is best known on Long Island as a member of the New York State Assembly and as a partner in an investment business, but Monday he was trying to diagnose a man with a headache.

"Would you describe the pain as throbbing?" Fitzpatrick said. "How would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10?"

Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) was taking part in a new "doctor for a day" program at Stony Brook University Medical Center, which also attracted several legislative aides. In an era of budget cuts, Stony Brook and teaching hospitals across the country are trying to show policymakers that training doctors is a complex, expensive undertaking.

Stony Brook also wants to make the case for expanding its medical school class, limited now to 124 a year. Expansion would require larger auditoriums and more faculty members - a difficult request at a time when the state is cutting budgets.

Other university hospitals began the "doctor for a day" program as much as 10 years ago. Stony Brook's version, which will stretch over two days, started Monday with a 6 a.m. breakfast.

The highlights included sessions in a 6,000-square-foot training center with mock examining rooms monitored by closed-circuit cameras. The men posing as patients with headaches were actors trained to describe symptoms to medical students. The students are then evaluated for their ability to diagnose conditions and work effectively with patients.

While Fitzpatrick questioned his "patient," Maria Hoffman, chief of staff for Assemb. Steven Englebright (D-Setauket), tried out her bedside manner in an adjoining examining room: "Do you have any other symptoms? Have you had any trauma or accidents?"

Both Fitzpatrick and Englebright serve on the Assembly's higher education committee, and have called on Albany to give Stony Brook and other SUNY schools more autonomy in setting tuition and keeping the money instead of returning it to the state's general budget.

Fitzpatrick said Monday's up-close look at the med school bolstered his belief that the campus needs more money to keep up with leading teaching hospitals. "We have to be able to compete in this competitive higher ed marketplace," he said.

Englebright had a schedule conflict, Hoffman said, so she signed up and took notes. She was especially pleased when administrators reported that 85 percent of doctors who train at Stony Brook take jobs in New York State.

The speeches included remarks by Dr. Ken Kaushansky, dean of Stony Brook's school of medicine, who told the nine participants that a federal government study forecasts a shortage of 66,000 primary care doctors in 10 years, including pediatricians and those who practice family medicine.

Stony Brook is constantly seeking money for research "because medicine stagnates if we don't keep learning about what causes disease," Kaushansky said.

The program was not for the squeamish. A visit to an anatomy classroom - where participants gathered around a cadaver that was being dissected - was followed by lunch.