Teaching Doctors To Care

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For Dr. Guillermo Herrera, who has been running Brigham and Women's Spanish Clinic since he founded it in 1971, better patient-doctor communication is exactly what his growing Hispanic patient population needs. The close relationship between Ocasio and Brickell has helped Ocasio navigate her way to a more honest dialogue with doctors--and eventually to better health. Ocasio had resisted treating her diabetes for a dangerously long time, for example, and even after she started going to the clinic, she refused to take her medication. Only after spending a few weeks with Brickell did Ocasio open up enough to say that back in Santo Domingo, her friends had told her that insulin caused blindness and led people to have their limbs amputated. After Brickell heard that, she was able to convince Ocasio that those were symptoms of the disease, not the insulin. For the first time in her life, Ocasio has been taking her insulin regularly, and she's feeling much better.

Brickell says the experience taught her that learning to see the world from the patient's point of view isn't squishy science; it's a way to get the kind of results everyone wants from the medical system. "Doctors aren't supposed to feel sorry for their patients. They're supposed to fix them," says Brickell. "And I think this program will help us do that."