July 2007 | Back to Table of Contents

Pulse

Paid to Paint

Two fourth-year University of Minnesota medical students, Justin Finch and Brian Muthyala, will share the first Fisch Art of Medicine Student Award.

Established and endowed by Minneapolis pediatrician Robert O. Fisch, M.D., a Holocaust survivor who has described his experience through paintings and prose, the $5,000 annual award is designed to enable students to explore the arts and humanities in ways that aren’t always possible in medical school. For example, students may take painting, photography, or sculpture classes, attend a writing workshop, take music or dance lessons, or create a documentary.

Finch, who was profiled in the July 2005 issue of Minnesota Medicine, plans to use his portion of the award to study documentary photography. Muthyala will create an audio documentary.

The students will show and discuss their work at a colloquium next spring. 

Documentary or Drug Ad?

Drug companies increasingly rely on television advertising to market their products to consumers. Now one firm is taking its message to the big screen.

Centocor Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson in Horsham, Pennsylvania, has released a documentary about the lives of three adults who are living with rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis. The hour-long film, Innerstate, ends with each person talking about their decision to begin treatment with the company’s biological agents.

Centocor has held free screenings of Innerstate in 13 cities, including Minneapolis.

Girls Just Want to Be Docs

Medicine is the No. 1 career choice of teenaged girls, according to a survey of 1,500 teens released by JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide earlier this year. Ten percent of girls ages 13 to 19 years who took the online survey picked “doctor” as their ideal job, followed by “teacher” and “businessperson.”

Darrell Luzo, senior vice president of education for JA Worldwide, speculates the girls’ choice may be inspired by television. “While we have no way of proving it, one might see a correlation between the rise of popularity in a medical drama like Grey’s Anatomy, whose target audience is young adult women, and an increase in the medical profession among girls,” Luzo said in a statement.

If television is swaying teens, it’s affecting boys differently than girls. “Businessperson” was the top career choice among boys, followed by “professional athlete” and jobs in the “computer field.”

Luring Physicians with Song

It’s hard to tell whether International Falls’ reputation as the nation’s icebox works for or against it. Even though the town of 6,300 on the Canadian border publicly has battled Fraser, Colorado, over trademark rights to the phrase “Icebox of the Nation,” the town’s leaders privately debate whether playing up weather with events such as the Freeze Your Gizzard 10K might be doing more harm than good when it comes to attracting permanent residents—like physicians.

In fact, Duluth Clinic-International Falls used to downplay weather as it attempted to lure family physicians, emphasizing instead its relatively new building, full electronic record system, onsite lab, ultrasound and X-ray technology, pharmacy, and access to the specialists in and technology of the SMDC system. But two years of using that tactic yielded no takers.

That’s why clinic administrator Sheila Hart turned to the SMDC marketing department for help. They viewed the doctor shortage as the whole town’s problem and enlisted community leaders for a brainstorming session. The goal was to come up with a way to draw national media attention to the town’s struggle to snag new doctors.

Hart mentioned that Garrison Keillor had vacationed on Rainy Lake, the gateway to the 218,000-acre Voyageurs National Park. “I was hoping there would be a soft spot in Garrison’s heart if we could somehow get our plight in front of him,” Hart says.

The idea uncorked the marketers’ creative juices. They hired a Duluth composer to write a song and International Falls Mayor Shawn Mason to write a letter about their need for a few good docs. They put the song on an I-Pod Shuffle and the letter in a pair of choppers (leather, wool-lined mittens) and shipped them to the folks at A Prairie Home Companion, who immediately expressed interest in doing something on the weekly radio program.

But the idea got placed on a back burner until the brouhaha with Fraser, Colorado, heated up last February and International Falls was again in the national spotlight over its trademark—cold weather. “They remembered and got in touch with the mayor and said they wanted to do something but that Garrison said he’d prefer to write his own song,” Hart recalls.

Finally, on his April 14 show, Keillor crooned: They’re looking for doctors / In International Falls / Up on the northern border / Where the loon calls. / They don’t need a psychiatrist, / They’re basically all right / But one who can remove fishhooks / And can treat frostbite.

Mason’s and Hart’s phones began ringing. Hart estimates the song has netted about 20 calls or e-mails—some from physicians and some from people simply wanting to visit Rainy Lake, which she says is still a win for the community. In June, she was checking references and setting up interviews for one physician she thinks might be a good catch.

The SMDC marketers, clinic, and community are now working to sustain the buzz created by the song, intentionally playing up the clinic’s northwoods location. They’re giving away fishing lures, “genuine Rapalas,” Hart notes, with the Duluth Clinic’s name and web address. They’ve developed an ad campaign with slogans such as “We’re looking for doctors not afraid to use leeches” and “Practice where you want to play.” “We get many physicians flying in to Canada for fishing trips,” Hart explains.

Despite the difficulties of attracting physicians to Minnesota’s northernmost clinic, Hart says they won’t take just anybody. “It has to be a good fit for everyone, or it’s not going to be successful.” Their last hire in 2005, Anthony Stone, M.D., was looking to practice in a beautiful, rural place. For him, International Falls was not only the right choice, it was the southern one. He had been looking at a job in Alaska.—Carmen Peota