Time Off

The patient who becomes upset when he calls his trusted family doctor and learns he is away on vacation generally calms down just as quickly. Doctors do rate their occasional rest. But are they taking time off too often, even between vacations? "It has become hazardous to develop a serious illness over a weekend or on a holiday, or even at night;" declared Manhattan's Dr. Milton Helpern last week. "The contagion of the medical day terminating at 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon in clinics seems to have infected some of the medical profession in private practice."

As New York City's chief medical examiner. Dr. Helpern concerns himself with violent and unexplained deaths--"patients" who are already beyond help and cannot call him in. But he is sufficiently interested in the standing of his profession to have worked his way up to the presidency of New York County's powerful (17,000-member) medical society. It was in his inaugural address that Dr. Helpern told his colleagues:

"The tendency for physicians to emulate their friends in business or other professions by disappearing to country homes or resorts, or to make themselves unavailable, seems to be on the increase.

Patients like to see their own physicians, and there would be an increase in respect for the medical profession if doctors made themselves more available beyond the working day."

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