One time a medical student said to me, “You know, you’re teaching us something about the humanity of medicine, and we’re not getting it in school.” I said, “I know you’re not. When I went through, we got it.  But now everything is rush, rush, rush.  And machines and tests, and people forget what I was first told when I was in medical school. ‘When a patient walks into your office, watch him from the time he walks in your office to the time he walks out.  Listen to everything he says; let him sit comfortably in the office and tell you what he wants to tell you.  Then do a complete physical examination on him, and try to make your diagnosis and then follow it up with other tests that have to be done.’” I had reached a point where I was becoming disgusted with medicine, because people were being treated like books and chairs and desks.

One of the first Black female doctors, Lena Edwards challenged the definition of a physician.