Class Teaches Lawyers, Doctors to Unite

March 15, 2005

Originally posted Thursday, March 10, 2005, by Tom Corwin, Augusta Chronicle Staff Writer

It sounds about as likely as wolves and sheep embracing in the meadow, but Charity Scott believes doctors can be taught not to fear and even to work with lawyers. "It's an uphill battle," she said before addressing medical students at the Medical College of Georgia. Ms. Scott, the director of the Center for Law, Health and Society at Georgia State University, has seen it happen for the past three years in a class she teaches that has both law and medical school students. "The first class it's kind of like a middle school dance," she joked, "boys on one side, girls on the other. Medical students on one side, law students on the other."

But the more they get to know and listen to each other, the more they educate each other, Ms. Scott said.

Georgia State is taking that idea into a partnership with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta that would provide an attorney to help low-income families with problems that might be affecting the child's health, such as substandard housing, she said.

The effort was hampered by the heated debate over medical malpractice reform that is often portrayed as doctors pitted against trial lawyers, Ms. Scott said. "I think it made it very difficult for us to find the first happy home for this partnership, because every time we turned around and presented this idea to a hospital, the hospital's reaction was, 'Lawyers? We don't want lawyers on the premises,'" she said.

Third-year medical student Jeromie Shoulders also had his misgivings about attorneys. "Every time you turn on the television, what do you see? You see some advertisement of malpractice (attorneys) or 'Have you been hurt this way?'" he said. But the lecture helped him see lawyers in a new light, he said.

"We're really not working against each other," he said. "We should be working together."

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwinaugustachronicle.com.

--From the Thursday, March 10, 2005 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle