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This is the last of three
stories featuring presenters at OU-COM’s 3rd Annual Continuing
Medical Education Conference and All Class Reunion, which starts
Oct. 1. Today is featured Bernie Siegel, M.D., the keynote
speaker for this year’s conference, who will
speak at
Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium Friday evening. Earlier in the week we featured Karen
Thomas, D.O.
(’96), and Mitchell Silver, D.O. (’89). (Links
to the previous stories are at the bottom of this page.) The CME/All Class Reunion brings
back alumni to Athens for three days of continuing medical
education seminars, reunites classmates and makes new colleagues and
friends. For more information, call (740) 593-2176 or e-mail
Sharon Zimmerman, director of alumni affairs.
By Brooke Bunch
Bernie Siegel,
M.D., believes in the power of love.
Siegel, the
keynote speaker at
OU-COM’s CME Conference and All Class Reunion, embraces a
philosophy that love, hope and respect
are just as important to prolonging lives as medical science.
His books, “Love, Medicine and
Miracles,” published in 1986; “Peace, Love and Healing,”
in 1989; and “How to Live Between Office Visits,” in
1993, have broken new ground in the field of healing.
On Saturday, Oct. 2, Siegel
will be making the noontime keynote presentation, “The
Psychology of Illness and the Art of Healing,” at reunion
conference.
According to Siegel, a lot is
to be said about the power of love. He says those who grow up
feeling loved by their parents treat themselves differently. In
addition, something as simple as owning a pet can improve one’s
mortality rate following a heart attack.
“I will be talking to health
professionals about all the things they didn’t learn during
their training,” Siegel says. “They get a lot of information but
not an education on how to care for themselves and their
patients. I will also be speaking to patients. I hope to empower
all of them and help them to survive, show them how to deal with
loss and how to accept mortality. But also I will speak to doing
what you love and how to enjoy caring for people.”
Siegel says he will share with
them with all the wisdom he has learned from those who have
learned the hard way.
“It’s a lot easier if someone
tells you how to deal with life before you run into it
yourself,” he says. “I hope to teach them how to play the game.
I try to inspire people rather than inform them.”
In 1978 Bernie founded
Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP), an individual and group
therapy based on “carefrontation,” a loving, safe, therapeutic
confrontation enabling everyone to understand his or her healing
potential. He has written extensively about the mind-body
connection in medicine, encouraging patients to take an active
role in the healing process.
Siegel says one of the good
things about osteopathic medicine is that osteopathic students
are required to touch their patients while being trained.
“You can be a M.D. and never
touch anyone unless you’re examining them,” Siegel says. “Those
in osteopathic medicine do touch people, and it makes a
difference in how they treat their patients.”
Siegel attended Colgate
University and Cornell University Medical College, where he
graduated with honors. His surgical training took place at Yale
New Haven Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He
practiced general and pediatric surgery until retiring in 1989.
He lives in the New Haven,
Conn., area. He and wife, Bobbie, have written many articles
together and have five children and many pets.
Siegel will also be holding a
workshop for students, interns and residents at the Margaret M.
Walter Hall prior to his noontime presentation. The workshop,
“The Real Reasons for Becoming a Doctor and Art is Medicine,”
begins at 8:30 a.m.
Siegel also will
give a lecture, “A Prescription for Life,” at 7 p.m. Friday,
Oct. 1, at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium. The
lecture is open to the Athens community. A book sale and signing
follows Siegel’s lecture.
For more information on the
conference, call (740) 593-2176 or e-mail
zimmerms@ohio.edu.
News for the week
of Sept. 27 – Oct. 2
News for the week
of Sept. 20 – 25
News for the week
of Sept. 13 – 18
News for the week
of Sept. 6 – 11
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