OPINION | MARY ANN SORRENTINO In the Boston Globe

First, do no harm

By Mary Ann Sorrentino,Updated October 2, 2019, 5:00 a.m.

Like many health care workers and administrators from these parts, I cut my teeth as a health professional in Boston at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, on the same site where today’s revered Brigham and Women’s continues a great medical tradition.

When I returned to my native Rhode Island, I had an opportunity to grow in that state’s first Health Maintenance Organization, proud to be part of a brave and committed team out to prove that good health depends on health maintenance, early detection, and routine preventive care. It wasn’t an easy message to deliver then, but with persistence, HMOs earned respect and standing.

During all those years and until my retirement from the health field, I had hired, fired, and worked with physicians — from cocky Harvard and Brown interns who sometimes had to be shown their boundaries to overly eager surgical residents embracing the “surgeon’s personality” (code for a surgeon’s assumed right to yell at attending staff, throw instruments across the operating room, and generally behave immaturely).

As a health administrator and as a patient who has been poked, prodded, and stitched up by the best and worst of them, I think I know a great doctor when I see one. That is why the recent death of a respected surgeon I was privileged to know as my doctor and as the genius whose amazing surgical skills gave my husband a new life has underscored my recognition of what a precious and rare gift a truly exceptional healer is.

Rejecting the typically stern surgical bearing that often sets surgeons apart, even from their medical peers, Dr. M was usually smiling, always thoughtful, and uniquely modest. He was always there for those in his care. He soon became the rudder keeping patients and those closest to them safely on course as he eventually guided them into a safe harbor.

As far from the stereotypical “surgical personality” model as one could get, he was a quiet man who looked you in the eye when he spoke and never had to raise his voice to make his point. I often described him as “elegant,” not only for the exquisitely tasteful wardrobe he wore with impeccable style, but also for the seamless way he turned a grave diagnosis into a brilliant treatment plan, then to a surgical miracle, and finally to a recovery full of reassurance and caring from the very surgeon who made that all possible. You could be discharged from the hospital by him, but you never, ever, stopped being one of his patients, someone he cared about.

He was determined to leave us all quietly, with privacy and without the commotion his exit from this life would surely have caused among colleagues, patients, students, and admirers had they all been aware of his year-plus battle against cancer. Eventually he wrapped himself in the comfort of the familial intimacy he cherished and deserved and — before we could even dare to imagine a world without him — he quietly moved on.

I saw grown men cry on hearing the news — even some of those instrument-throwing “surgical personality” types. Most of us wept openly and later recalled favorite moments in this man’s orbit, certain we might never know anyone who would reach his standard again. Many of us cursed the injustice of all that genius, grace, and magic packed into such a brief life, cut short, mercilessly, at 57 years.

My hope is that his quiet, capable, and determined ways will be imitated by other doctors. May that calm, sure, and steady manner become contagious. Many he treated or worked with have already come to emulate the resounding example of his quiet, steady, and healing style. He knew exactly what his final message would be.

He was giving us lessons in healing wrapped in elegance, dignity, and compassion right to the end. If there is a heaven, he is surely in a place where angels ask him how to fly more gracefully. (And he will make that happen!)

His eventual greatness sprang from the pledge that he had made and kept since day one, “First, do no harm.” Privately and professionally, he kept that promise, and therein lives his legacy.

The rest is up to us.

Mary Ann Sorrentino’s column appears regularly on the First Wednesday in the Globe. Follow her on Twitter at @Thatmaryann or email thatmaryann@yahoo.com.