If you ever wondered why anyone would live in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins is a pretty good reason. For the 17th consecutive year, The Johns Hopkins Hospital has topped U.S.News & World Report's annual rankings of "America's Best Hospitals."



This year they ranked number 1 overall of all hospitals in the United States and number 1 in these specialties:

Urology; Gynecology; Ear, nose and throat; Rheumatology. They ranked number 2 in Psychiatry and Ophthalmology.

I have been privileged of sorts to spend years on this wing of the hospital due to another family member who was nursed back to health over a long period of time. Once in a while something simple becomes something remarkable.

What I witnessed yesterday was humanity, frailty, medicine and the Hippocratic Oath in total synergy. It was like poetry in real life. It was a form of dance that could be labeled a "pavane." (A pavane is defined as a slow processional dance.)

The scene, a young foreign doctor, of which Hopkins has several thousand, working with an 83 year old woman confined in a wheel chair. He was taking the lady's blood pressure. "90 over 50, that's low. Here you put on the stethoscope and listen". The lady had a hard time hearing her pulse coming through the instrument. "Here, you take my blood pressure" offered the doctor.

The doctor strapped the Blood Pressure device on his own arm and had the 83 year old lady patient listen for his arterial pulse. When the woman patient continued having a hard time to hear the pulse through the stethoscope, he offered that she could listen to his heartbeat. "It's easier to hear the heartbeat."

Then he had the woman listen to her own heart beat. Thirty minutes later he was still having her "play" doctor, alternating with her, who would be the "doctor" and finally moved into helping understand why she was being asked to take a new medicine.

I am not sure if they teach "bedside manner" as a course there, but this intern gets an "A+".

Now I have a least one reason to believe that as a teaching institution, Hopkins could very well be the best, at least in my mind and in the mind of an 83 year old woman patient in residence there.