Surgical clinics in the USA in the 1920s through the eyes of S.S. Yudin

Abstract

S.S. Yudin used part of his prize won in 1926 for his monograph on spinal anaesthesia, which was named the best medical book in the Soviet Union, to fund a six-month trip to the United States. During his stay, he visited the best surgical clinics,where he studied the organisation of medical care. He shared his impressions with colleagues in notes titled “A guest of American surgeons”, which were published in the journal New Surgical Archives. Yudin considered the general organisation of the work of doctors, and the scope and speed of work the most critical. And he saw as the most interesting the operating principles of various departments in major multi-speciality hospitals (outpatient, surgical, operating unit), the setup of me-dical education and the training of doctors, which remains relevant to modern-day healthcare in Russia. According to Yudin,the American “Fordization” of surgical assistance enables, on hand, to standardise techniques, enhance the work of medical equipment, treatment and diagnostic equipment, as well as medical personnel, and on the other hand, it enables to achieve consistently excellent treatment results while constantly increasing the number of patients in outpatient and in-patient de-partments. Yudin acquainted himself with the principles of organisation of the American department of coordinators of the work of doctors in both surgical and outpatient departments. These principles optimise the load on each professional and minimise the time spent on consultation, which enables to maintain a conducive emotional background for patients and to extract maximum output from professionals at the workplace.