Lessons from a Mentor

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." - Jim Horning

Helmuth Goepfert never minces words. Dr. Goepfert retired last month after a distinguished career as Chairman of Head and Neck Surgery at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he was Program Director during my fellowship. His career began with a General Surgery residency in his native Chile, an Oncology fellowship at UCLA, and an Otolaryngology residency at Baylor. His wealth of experience, his confidence, and his extraordinary skill made him a natural leader and teacher. I eagerly absorbed as much as possible, but there was always more to learn.

I proudly invited Dr. Goepfert to be a Visiting Professor very early in my MCW career, hoping to demonstrate some of the lessons he had taught. During a case presentation, I watched his stoic countenance as I recounted the miserable course through which one of my patients had suffered. Every possible post-operative complication had occurred. Every wound had broken down. Just as the patient was starting to heal, multiple pulmonary metastases evolved. It was a nightmare for both patient and physician. “Dr. Goepfert, what would you have done differently?” I asked. He shook his head. “I would never have operated on this man in the first place!” I was still learning valuable lessons from him, this time in front of a room full of people.

As Niels Bohr pointed out, “an expert has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field.” Dr. Goepfert’s legacies include his mentorship of clinician-scientists and his ability to share his experiences. Similarly, we try to assure that none of our own trainees will repeat our errors in judgment. As teachers, we pass these hard lessons to the next generation. Thanks to wonderful mentors like Helmuth Goepfert, cancer patients even this far from Texas will get better care for years to come.

"Reflections" is a collection of essays by the health professionals of the Medical College of Wisconsin.