Physicians got an exclusive advance preview of the AMA-sponsored PBS documentary Rx: Hope for Health Care in the U.S. Friday night at the 2014 AMA Interim Meeting in Dallas.
The documentary’s award-winning director, writer, producer and cinematographer David Grubin answered questions during a session moderated by Edward H. Livingston, MD, deputy editor of clinical content for JAMA.
The film is about the physician experience, and the powerful relationships and patient encounters physicians have. Grubin’s father and grandfather were physicians, among others in his family.
“[My father] forged profound connections with his patients that, in my mind, made him a hero in the high drama of his medicine,” Grubin said. “As a child, I remember looking at that black bag and just thinking of it being filled with miracles.”
The film looks beyond technology and medicine, and explores a health care model focused on medicine's fundamental mission: to promote health, prevent sickness and help people live long, productive lives. One theme of the film is the team-based care model.
“It’s a very stressful job, and when you had a team to talk to, and you had other eyes on the situation, the burden wasn’t all yours,” Grubin said of his experiences filming physicians around the country.
The documentary places patients and caregivers within the context of innovative practices. It explores how physician practices foster affordable health care while encouraging intimacy, inclusion, trust and healing. Among the film’s subjects are a primary care center in Anchorage run by Alaskan natives, a family physician in a small town in Maine and an innovative medical education program at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine.
Grubin hopes the film will show non-physicians how much high-quality doctoring is happening around the country, in contrast to what may be portrayed on television shows, on the nightly news or in Hollywood movies.
“How do you treat chronic disease? It’s difficult to make a film about it,” Grubin said. “That’s what you haven’t seen on television. It’s all about the relationship you have with that patient, and that’s what I’m trying to represent on the film, so people see doctors really working in a way they haven’t seen before.”
The film will be released next year.
Grubin has produced more than 100 films and won many awards in the field of documentary television, including 10 Emmy awards. His five-part series for PBS, Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers, won numerous awards, and the companion book for which he was executive editor rose to No. 1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list, remaining there for 32 weeks.
