{"id":130342,"date":"2025-02-04T17:42:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T22:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=130342"},"modified":"2025-04-18T12:33:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T16:33:02","slug":"finding-meaning-in-medicine-and-in-helping-others","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/medicine\/articles\/2025\/finding-meaning-in-medicine-and-in-helping-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Meaning in Medicine\u2014 and in Helping Others"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFinding Meaning in Medicine\u2014 and in Helping Others\u00a0\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Mort Salomon credits Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine for his satisfying, multifaceted career and is pleased to make a gift that will pave the way for future students.\u00a0<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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Back when Mort Salomon, MD (CAMED\u201977), earned his first degree, a bachelor\u2019s in history, his path to a successful medical career was anything but clear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salomon\u2019s pursuit of a clinical psychology PhD at the University of Rochester was disrupted by the Vietnam War and the end of graduate-school exemptions and deferments. He was not drafted, but the hiatus in his education led him to look more closely at his goals\u2014and a stint working in clinical group therapy made them clear. \u201cI was looking for something that would be more definitively helpful to people, and medicine seemed like an obvious alternative to psychotherapy,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a short period at Columbia University while working as a research assistant at New York Medical College, Salomon began his medical education at BU in 1973. With his family funding his tuition and his own savings covering living expenses, he found himself in a better position than many, but national politics came into play again. During his four years at BU, Congress reduced\u2014and then ended\u2014subsidies for medical training and tuition quintupled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst ballooning costs and antiwar demonstrations, Salomon forged strong bonds with his medical school classmates. He fondly remembers joining a student action to resist the sudden end of pass\/fail grading by taking exams anonymously and withholding the identity key from faculty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his first year, Salomon heard advice from Pediatrics Chair Joel Alpert that he kept in mind throughout his career. Alpert described how, in the first two years of school, medical students are subject to a lot of scientific education, often causing those seeking to become clinicians to consider the emphasis on science irrelevant\u2014a tension that\u2019s long existed in medical schools. \u201cNot everything you\u2019re going to learn is relevant. But, as first-year students, you\u2019re not in a position yet to know what is relevant and what is not,\u201d Alpert had said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI realized that Joel was correct about that,\u201d Salomon reflects. \u201cLots of things that seem very esoteric for a first-year student actually come back to inform your thinking about patients later on.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also recalls formative memories of Dr. Eileen Ouellette. \u201cShe took a couple of evenings out of her personal life to shepherd us around the pediatric emergency department and talk to us about patients who were there, just to give us clinical exposure,\u201d he says of his professor. \u201cIn the first months of our education, that was a wonderful gift.\u201d His BU experiences led Salomon to his dual career path: pediatrics and emergency medicine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My educational opportunities allowed me to have a meaningful career that provides a lot of social benefit. I feel that helping the medical school fund the education of other developing doctors is a meaningful gift.<\/div>