Doctors in Community

The Training of Interns and Residents at Brackenridge Hospital, Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas, has a great tradition of medical excellence. In this writing, it is my goal to demonstrate the qualities that led a community of doctors to nurture young doctors, fresh out of medical school, to become better practitioners and better people as they care for their patients. The choices that they made to spend time beyond their own practices to make sure that these trainees learn the ropes speak volumes about their character and drive. These characteristics, seen in many over generations, reflect a special kind of person who gives of himself or herself with no idea that anyone will recognize their efforts or reward them for the hours that they have spent. For the first forty years of this history, there was minimal organization or supervising structure and just a will to improve quality. For the next forty years, there developed a significant progression of well-thought-out organizations that were able to respond to the complex requirements of the national medical organizations, as well as community, state, and federal regulations to make the system even more responsive. There has been a progression of teaching techniques from the older follow the masters approach to the modern evidence-based medicine process of today.