Barron H. Lerner

“My family, as always, is very supportive. My teenagers, Ben and Nina, had so little interest in interacting with me that it freed up time to work on the book.”
― Barron H. Lerner, One for the Road: Drunk Driving since 1900

“My father's concern for his patients was only enhanced by the fact that so many of them had a personal connection to him...In the words of the historian David J. Rothman, 'doctor and patient occupied the same social space,' promoting a shared relationship. Meanwhile, the poor and minority patients my dad met for the first time at the Mount Sinai--including many he would then follow for years--got the same royal treatment...His goal was to 'take extra pains with the service patients, to be certain they are reassured and confident in your care, and come to believe that you really care about him or her as an individual.' One way he did this was to take advantage of his flexible schedule. 'It's so simple,' he wrote, 'to make an extra visit in the afternoon for these special cases, come back to report a new lab test result, review an X-ray [or] reassure that the scheduled test is necessary, important and will lead to some conclusive information.' Illness, he underscored, was 'frightening.”
― Barron H. Lerner, The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics