–Dr. Crystal
Now came the hard part—fundraising.
“I found out that I would have to raise between $650,000 and $700,000 to make a one-hour film,” Dr. Crystal says. “I tried, but I’m a doctor and don’t like asking people for money. I realized that probably wasn’t going to happen.”
But she wasn’t willing to abandon the project. So she turned her attention to YouTube, which, by then, had been online for four years. At the time, shorter videos were popular. Dr. Crystal had to develop a new plan.
Her current goal is to build a website that would highlight the CMC stories, which would be part of a medical humanities course at medical schools across the country. Medical students, residents, and other doctors could learn about the history of medicine and obstetrics. She says there are many lessons to be learned that don’t involve medical procedures, such as the impact of social and cultural issues on a physician’s ability to deliver healthcare.
A teaching moment between Dr. Beatrice Tucker and a resident physician in the 1950s. Notice the baby on the kitchen table and medical student washing his hands in the kitchen sink. Photos courtesy of Dr. Crystal
“We need to look back on the important lessons the medical students learned at the CMC,” she says. “Not about how to do specific procedures, but how to interact with patients who may be very different from themselves.”
There seems to be plenty of interest in the topic; Dr. Crystal has since built a Twitter following of 5,700 people who read articles she tweets about medicine’s past, present, and future (@CatchTheBaby).
Still, she needs to build the website, edit the hours of film into short films, and then post them on the website with a study guide. The cost, she says, could run anywhere between $35,000 and $65,000.
“I don’t necessarily have to work with people who are PBS documentarians,” she says, adding that over recent years she has contacted several university film professors and students who turned down the project because it was too much to tackle. “I’d like to use a crowd-funding [platform like] Kickstarter or Indiegogo to raise the money, so I could edit the film.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Johnson is getting older and would enjoy seeing this project completed. So would his friends who helped pay for the trailer and original filming, says Dr. Crystal. Besides, she believes these stories can help new doctors better balance their focus between technology and face time with patients.
“Medical school education is changing quite a bit,” she says. “Despite advances in technology, we can’t forget we’re treating a human being first.”
Carol Patton is a freelance writer in Las Vegas.