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VOLUME 21, NUMBER 26
JULY 12,1974
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Lincoln Health Planner Schmidt Believes
^Practicality Is Essential for Quality Patient Care
\ 1
OPEN WIDE
N O W— Project
director of Lincoln
Community Health
Center since 1971,
Pediatrician Dr.
Evelyn Schmidt
spends a couple of
hours a week at the
center's clinic and
satellite facility in
R o ugemont/Bahama
examining children.
She believes that a
physician must look
at the ' 'total
patient," that is
"not just as a person
who comes into
your office, but also
as a member of a
home, a community
and a work
e n V i r on me n t."
(Photo by Dale
Moses)
Radiology Department's David Page
Helps Students Create Documentary
ft
On a clear day, the church steeple at
Portsmouth village shimmers across the
waters of Ocracoke Inlet, a silent
landmark for a place rarely visited by the
crowds of tourists who annually visit
North Carolina's historic Outer Banks.
It wasn't always that way, so quiet and
broodingly still at Portsmouth. The
village, which lies approximately 25 miles
northeast of the medical center's Sea
Level Hospital, once was home for
hundreds of North Carolinians who
preferred living by the capricious Atlantic
rather than on the mainland.
Portsmouth's importance during the
Revolutionary War is mentioned in the
history books, for in those days Ocracoke
Inlet favored the little village. But the
inlet and the sailing ships that used it
gradually shifted toward Ocracoke Village
four miles away, and Portsmouth faded
into oblivion after the Civil War.
Today, nobody lives there
permanently. But despite the periodic
indignancies visited upon them by vandals
and weather, the old Methodist church
and several houses belonging to people
who were born and lived much of their
adult lives in Portsmouth are kept in good
repair.
Memories of this village which was
once the chief seaport along the Atlantic
Outer Banks and of the island's early
inhabitants who were independent
enough to secede from North Carolina
when North Carolina seceded from the
Union are being rekindled and preserved
through a documentary film conceived by
David Page, a photographic engineer in
the Department of Radiology's Radiation
Physics section.
The film, which is in color and will run
approximately 15 minutes in length, has
been created by a group of Duke students
headed by anthropology major Bill
Shmidheiser.
Page, who is serving as narrator,
part-time cameraman and technical
director for the documentary, first
became interested in the island two years
ago while studying an old map of North
Carolina.
He said he noticed the name
Portsmouth between Cape Lookout and
Cape Hatteras and, desiring to know
about the village and the island as a
(Continued on page 2)
*1™
WRECK OF THE "JOHN /. S/VOIV"—The skeleton of the John /. Snow has been lying
on Portsmouth Island since 1907, when the merchant vessel came ashore during a
storm. Its cargo, salvaged by the people of the island, included all kinds of men's and
women's wearing apparel, a complete hotel which was to be erected ir» New York and
the first automobile to leave tracks on Portsmouth's sandy streets. David Page, a
photographic engineer in the Department of Radiology's Radiation Physics section,
has been helping Duke students make a documentary film about the island's history
and future. (Photo by David Page)
"We have let a lot of medicine go
down the drain because on paper it looks
very good.
"You make the right diagnosis; you do
a beautiful history and physical; you
make this great plan; and you're
self-satisfied. But there is one thing
missing in your work—the element of
practicality."
Those are the words of Dr. Evelyn
Schmidt, project director of Lincoln
Community Health Center in Durham—a
physician who believes it's essential to
look at the "total patient."
"Many people today, including
myself," she said, "feel that in evaluating
the quality of patient care there has to be
some visible results from the patient's
point of view. We ask, for example, "What
has the effect of all this been for the
patient in terms of his health?'
"When you begin answering that
question," Dr. Schmidt said, "it means
that you have taken a look at a patient,
not just as a person who comes into your
office, but also as a member of a home, a
community and a work environment."
In the course of a day's work at
Lincoln, Dr. Schmidt takes a look at a lot
of patients and examines the total set of
circumstances that brings a specific
patient to a doctor's attention.
And whatever she's doing at the
moment—talking about community
medicine, planning a health fair, seeing a
patient at Lincoln or recalling her nnedical
student days at Duke just after World War
II—Dr. Schmidt puts herself totally into
the project, and at a pace that leaves the
unconditioned follower trailing behind.
Pediatrician, educator, administrator
and a firm believer in primary health care
programs which offer a full array of
preventive, maintenance and therapeutic
health services. Dr. Schmidt began her
association with Duke and the Durham
communities more than 30 years ago.
Born and raised in New York, Dr.
Schmidt came to "the South" in 1943 to
enroll as an undergraduate at Duke.
Following her college training, she
entered Duke's School of Medicine in
1947, thus making a first step (many of
which were to follow) in fulfilling a
life-long dream to become a physician.
As one of six entering female medical
students in a class of 72, Dr. Schmidt
looks back in amusement and recalls
those days at Duke when females were
provided with less than adequate facilities
and corresponding responsibilities in
carrying out their work.
For example, she remembers that
female students were not allowed to live
in the graduate dormitory because the
"genteel sex" were considered
"undesirable" and had to find living
quarters outside of the campus in
Durham.
The existence ,of only one bathroom
allocated for females in the hospital at
that time also posed some interesting
problems. "As medical students," Dr.
Schmidt noted, "we had to provide
specimens, and there we were with our
jugs, running down to the first floor near
(Continued on page 3)