In this well-conceived and edifying medical documentary, director Muffie Meyer and her crew focus of the art of medicine as embodied and taught by Valentin Fuster (Physician-in-Chief of the Mount Sinai Hospital) and Herschel Sklaroff (Clinical Professor of Cardiology at Mount Sinai), highly skilled and sensitive physicians. In this age when many in the medical community salute and rely on the latest technology, these two are convinced that really listening, consoling, and making the most of the data gained at the bedside are the best ways to treat hospital patients.
We follow Furster and Sklaroff during "rounds" as they and several physicians in training visit critically ill men and women. Dr. Sklaroff sadly states that "today you don't get paid for thinking, you get paid for tests." Americans spend $700 billion a year on medical tests and procedures, many of which are unnecessary.
Among the patients Furster and Sklaroff chat with are a Latino woman who repeatedly described her pain as being on the right side of her body while those treating her were convinced that the pain was on the left side; she expresses her anger for not being taken seriously. Talk with another patient reveals a misdiagnosis and the uncovering of the true source of the problem in a broken mask used for sleep apnea. The most moving segments of this medical documentary deal with the sadness of the doctors treating a middle-aged black man who does not want an operation that would give him a longer life.
Making Rounds is a healing and helpful documentary that offers fresh insights on the importance of the patient-physician relationship.
