It's Catching
As a very young and very new social worker on the neurology service of a major metropolitan cancer hospital, I was befriended by the Chief Resident. He was short, dark and handsome and enjoyed the fact that my office always had a bowl of hard candy on the visitor's table. I enjoyed the fact that he could sit silently in my office, quiet with his own thoughts, but there, reminding me that I was not alone. His wit and his compassion and his willingness to actually listen to the patients were added bonuses. He was, in short, a mensch . For those of you unfamiliar with hospital hierarchies in the 1970's, a brief tutorial may be in order. Basically, it was all about power. Hospitals were color coded. Maintenance, janitorial, food service, nurses, assistants and physicians of all levels of training and certification, all the ancillary services -- each had its own color or style and, except for pediatrics, where Winnie the Pooh was popular across bo...