What strikes me most about Jerry Groopman is the way he loves his patients. Not only that but he shows that love in word and gesture. “You are a good hugger,” says Gene Brown, a forty-year-old AIDS patient shown in an extraordinary program in the series “Dateline NBC.”

This program, entitled “The Healer,” was televised this past December. I regard it as an altogether extraordinary service to the public at large, and to people who face illness in particular. Reviewing it on videotape has further inspired me with admiration for the two patients and the doctor who served them so well.

Dr. Jerome Groopman, whom this program highlights, serves as Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess. He has become widely known through his articles in the New Yorker and other periodicals. His two books, The Measure of Our Days and the forthcoming Second Opinions will enhance his reputation further.

In the first of these books he wrote about a highly successful middle-aged venture capitalist who realized at the end of his life that he had invested in the wrong things – money instead of family and what really counts. His patient’s  spiritual situation confronted Dr.Groopman with a difficult challenge, in his own words “to find some way to give him comfort and to allow him, at the end of his life, to find meaning and to pass meaning on to his family.”

Beyond Dr. Groopman’s impressive scientific credentials, his personal qualities make him an admired healer, something that emerges strongly in the television documentary. Here he brings the latest medical knowledge and techniques to help Gene Brown, mentioned above, and Elizabeth Sanderson, a deeply religious 64-year-old woman, who has breast cancer.

Dr. Groopman’s continued efforts to cure the two people shapes an adventure story in itself. Ups and agonizing downs characterize the struggle that these patients and their doctor wage against their diseases. Some reports the two people get from their doctor encourage them; inevitably, it seems, these upbeat indications are all too soon followed by the dashing of hopes for a cure.

Eventually, they both die, Gene at home after having decided to forego further medical procedures, Elizabeth in the hospital surrounded by family members. Both die at peace, with Gene saying “I’m a fulfilled man, I’ll tell you,” and Elizabeth saying “I’m not afraid, I’m more overwhelmed with the goodness of God.”

So, even though they were not cured, they were healed and could die without regret. That way of dying witnesses to their strength of soul and also to the rare ability of their doctor, Jerry Groopman, to enter into their experience with deep understanding and courageous empathy.

His patients often call him “Jerry” in recognition of the personal relation-ship he develops with them and they with him. This tall, physically impressive middle-aged physician with the sympathetic face, risks much himself as he listens to the hopes and fears of his patients.

The way he clasps their hands with his own, puts his arm around their shoulders, pats Gene’s knee and laughs at moments of humor – all reveal Jerry as full of human feeling. At the same time, he tells them openly where the treatment stands and what they can reasonably hope from it.

The last time he sees Gene, they embrace upon parting. Gene tells him, “I love you, Jerry” to which he replies “and you.”

How did Jerry Groopman get this way? In the video he recalls experiencing his father’s death. He and his mother were at the beside and, when his father died, all the attending physician could say was, “Well, it’s tough, kid.” About this response Jerry now says, “I would never imagine caring for patients and their families in any way like this.”

In an interview, I asked the same question of Rev. Herbert Sanderson, the husband of Elizabeth. “My suspicion is that Dr. Groopman’s patients have made him what he is,” he answered.

The interviewer in the documentary asks him if there comes a point when he focuses more on the psychological and the spiritual element in the patient. “Yes,” Dr. Groopman responds, “and it’s in some ways much more difficult because it requires knowing the person and also knowing yourself and being able to open myself up to that person.”

He seems to draw vital strength and inspiration from his own Jewish faith. The last part of the program shows Jerry Groopman in his synagogue for a worship service. The camera focuses on him lighting a candle and reciting the Kaddish in memory of the dead.

Asked what he was thinking about at this point, he answers: “I was thinking what the lives of the people I cared for still mean to me. They live in my heart and my memory.”

He adds, “They have shaped parts of my life in very substantial ways. And I express genuine and profound gratitude to them through that prayer.”

Richard Griffin