UB prof on NPR

By JESSICA ANCKER
Reporter Contributor

A graduate of the University of Connecticut Medical School, she completed her residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Fellowships at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of California at San Francisco allowed her to pursue her interests in consultation psychiatry and medical ethics. She has also worked as a psychiatrist at San Francisco General Hospital.

Since moving to Buffalo in 1995, Shuchman has been spending three days a week at ECMC and the rest of the week in Toronto with her husband, Don Redelmeier, a physician on the faculty of the University of Toronto, and their son, 2-year-old Daniel. Currently, she is on a six month's leave of absence, which began in November, to complete a radio documentary on schizophrenia for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, to be aired this spring.

Some of Shuchman's work for the popular media has been in collaboration with Michael Wilkes, one of her classmates from both high school and medical school who now teaches at University of California at Los Angeles Medical School.

In their first collaboration, an article for the Hartford Courant written while they were in medical school, they discussed the medical school socialization process that helps turn a student into a doctor. Later, in columns for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, Shuchman and Wilkes educated readers about such issues as clinical depression, back pain, smoking cessation, and vaccines. Their writing caught the attention of a National Public Radio executive, who invited them to create their monthly program for Weekend Edition Sunday.

Their close professional relationship shows in the smoothness of their fast-paced discussions on the radio program. One of them may begin an explanation of the day's topic, and hand it over to the other to complete, as in a well-rehearsed duet. They translate medical terms into simpler language that will be familiar to a lay audience. When they disagree, they do so politely but unapologetically.

In the week before each broadcast, Shuchman, Wilkes, and NPR host Liane Hansen hold a telephone meeting to choose a headline-grabbing topic.

Shuchman then prepares herself with a blitz of research, combing through professional journals and news clippings and interviews experts around the country. She may ask professional societies, such as the American Psychiatric Association, to provide background material, or seek the help of NPR staff in collecting relevant news articles.

On a recent "Medical Rounds," Wilkes and Shuchman discussed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Aleve. They pointed out that these drugs can cause serious side-effects, including ulcers. Hansen asked whether self-medication was dangerous. "I'm not sure that medicating oneself when it's a matter of having pain is such a bad idea," Shuchman said. "You don't want to always have to call your doctor and say, 'I have this pain again, what do you think I should do?' It does make it easier for people that they can walk into the drugstore and talk to the pharmacist and say, 'I know that there are a number of these drugs which are over the counter. What do you suggest?'"

"I think I've got to disagree, Miriam," Wilkes responded. "I think that few people talk to the pharmacist when they buy over-the-counter drugs. I'm worried about how many people end up in the hospital with serious complications like ulcer disease, etc., and even death, as a result of taking too many of these drugs."

The pair said later that the issue was one on which they have long disagreed. "Michael tends to wear a public health hat, and I tend to wear an individual patient hat," Shuchman said. "I really think there's a limit to how much people want to be protected from things-whether it's in medicine or in something else, like the speed limit on the highway. We know that a 55 mile-per-hour speed limit is safer, but people want to drive faster."

Much of Shuchman's media work focuses on mental health, including such topics as the impact of violence on children who witness it and the value of talk therapy and medication in the treatment of depression.

Shuchman won the 1996 Media Award from the Northern California Psychiatric Society. It's unusual to get such praise for her journalism work, Shuchman says. "Far more often, you get a letter from someone who disagrees with you or is offended by something you said." But, she says, she appreciates even these letters.

She adds, "If I get letters that are very moving, where people share their personal stories or have been offended or hurt by something I said, I'll often call back or e-mail." In one case, after a program on mastectomies and lumpectomies, she spent several hours on the phone with a listener who had lost his wife to breast cancer.

Shuchman sees her two careers, medicine and journalism, as closely intertwined. Being a physician gives her the credibility to influence the public's understanding of medical issues.

"I keep getting grabbed by stories, coming from my patients, or my students, or the ideas that come up in practice."

PHOTO BY FRANK CESARIO