Ruth Hillebrand found
out she was dying after a physician called her Manhattan apartment
late one night.
It was a rare form
of cancer -- mesothelioma. The disease had no treatment and no
cure, the doctor told her bluntly. Then he hung up.
Unbeknownst to the
physician, Hillebrand was living alone at the time with no one
to talk to and no one to comfort her after receiving the news.
She passed away on June 17, 1994, at age 67.
But before she died,
she decided to set up a trust, the recipients of which to be designated
by her brother, Joseph. Her idea was that the trust's funds would
be directed toward teaching doctors to communicate with patients
in a thoughtful and sensitive manner.
Joseph Hillebrand
'43, a retired attorney in Toledo, Ohio, now suffers from the
same disease as his sister. To fulfill her wishes and honor her
memory, he has chosen to establish the Hillebrand Family Program
for Physician Education through the Walther Cancer Research Center
at Notre Dame. The program aims to teach medical students and
practicing physicians communication techniques to improve the
doctor-patient relationship.
The center's director,
Rudolph Navari, M.D., '66, who has more than 20 years experience
in clinical oncology, says he and his team have developed techniques
to improve doctor-patient relationships through educational intervention.
Just as people can learn the anatomy of the heart or the body,
he says, they can learn good interviewing techniques and how to
communicate better with patients.
Through the Hillebrand
Program, he says, the center will work with other schools of medicine
interested in integrating this approach into their educational
curriculum.
Navari says recent
studies suggest that effective doctor-patient communication is
an essential component of cancer care, yet most medical schools
and training programs put little emphasis on communication up
until five or six years ago.
"The
bottom line is, patients want their doctors to talk to them,"
he says.
Since it was founded
in 1985, the Walther center has contributed more than $33 million
to collaborative cancer research projects at Notre Dame, Indiana,
Purdue, Michigan and other Midwest universities and medical centers.
(October 2004)
