Ken Burns Archives - Holistic GPS

The Unexplored Faith in Ken Burnsâs âThe Mayo Clinicâ

Image: Courtesy of Saint Mary’s Hospital Archives, Rochester, MN / PBS

This is an article I wrote for ChristianityToday.com, which first appeared on October 4, 2018.

An immigrant doctor. A deadly 1883 tornado. And the unlikely partnership of a determined Franciscan Sister who had a vision from God to build a world-renowned hospital and the agnostic English physician who championed Darwin.

“How have I not heard this incredible story until now?!” I wondered during my first visit to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, during a cold week in February 2010.

It had all the makings of a movie.

Clearly, Ken Burns felt the same way.

The prolific documentarian, captivated by the story while a Mayo patient, captures 150 years of Mayo Clinic history and stories in two hours in his latest film, The Mayo Clinic: Faith-Hope-Science.

As a Minnesotan living an hour from the top-ranked hospital system in the US, I’ve visited what has become a medical mecca for patients from 50 states and 150 countries on numerous occasions, supporting family members undergoing surgery and tests.

Having seen all 29 of Burns’s films, I was thrilled to see this distinctly American—and dare I say, Minnesotan—story, told by “America’s Storyteller” for a national audience on PBS last week. While unable to compete with the epic length of The Civil War, Baseball, or Jazz, The Mayo Clinic flows like an expression of gratitude, a praiseworthy hat tip from the filmmaker.

Backed by Burns’s teams, talent and toolkit, the film unpacks Mayo’s remarkable origin story and its enduring legacy of faith and science—a union guided both by the primary value the elder Dr. William Worrall Mayo instilled in his sons: “The needs of the patient come first,” along with the Sisters of St. Francis who taught nurses “to treat every patient like Jesus Christ.”

What about the patients’ faith?

While the film sheds light on the role of faith from the influence of the Sisters, it did not explore how the faith of patients may play a role in their journey and outcomes. (It is only hinted at in a story of a pregnant patient with eye cancer who declined elective termination.)

Roger Frisch, a patient whose brain surgery experience at Mayo is featured in the film, said….

Read the rest of the article at Christianity Today…

I admit, I’m not a big TV watcher.

But I DO love documentaries and anything in the health, history, smart political genre.

Think The West Wing, or health documentaries like Food, Inc. and Food Fight.

My all-time favorite documentaries are from “America’s Storyteller” Ken Burns.

I have seen Every. Single. One. of his productions over the past several years because no one can unpack history and inspire us and move us quite like Ken.

So that brings me to the first TV series I’m excited about this Fall 2018 Season:

1. The Mayo Clinic

As a Minnesotan, I probably know the most about Mayo ahead of time out of any topic Ken Burns has covered.

I have been there numerous times to support my mom when she going through health challenges, and to be with my sister in her appointments there. I enjoy being a tour guide and navigator for new people and telling them about the history along the way.

I look forward to how he tells the history and enduring legacy of the Mayo men and the Sisters, since without them and that darn tornado, we may not have the most famous clinic in the world!

I look forward to how he tells the story of the Mayo men and the Sisters, since without them and that darn tornado, we may not have the most famous clinic in the world!

The second new TV series I’m super excited about is one I only found out about a few weeks ago when the trailer hit social media:

2. New Amsterdam

A new series that appears to tackle head on that the healthcare system’s emperor has no clothes? By a doctor unafraid to challenge the status quo?

A series that suggests what we all know: that the healthcare system itself is broken and we need to be the change we want to see? A show that presents some human stories of hope for change?

Count me in!

Now let me say this.

Does the U.S. have good emergency care in an acute crisis?

Yes, absolutely. We need those heroic healthcare professionals!

If you get in a major car crash or break a limb or face an emergency health crisis like the one my mom did that brought her to Mayo, you want a good medical team and a good surgeon!

But sadly too many people end their journey there and don’t know there is more to health and healthcare than painkillers and medical technology. That there are other less-invasive and effective options to activate your healing in ways that work WITH your spirit, soul and body after you’ve faced a trauma.

The time-proven holistic health, functional medicine, wellness-minded models that pull from thousands of years of multiple healing toolkits and multiple paradigms are needed at the healthcare table, too.

We need the wisdom of these disciplines.

We need these doctors and practitioners and coaches at the table—people who aim to activate wellness not just manage disease!—to address the bioindividuality of each person and help people truly reclaim their health and live vibrant lives.

Because this country does NOT just have a healthCARE system crisis, we have a health crisis.

And trying to “fix” a bleeding healthcare system with the bandaid of different insurance delivery methods may help for awhile, but it can never fix the ruptured artery that is the actual health crisis.

For that, we need to stop marginalizing the “elders” of humanity’s health care just because they didn’t originate in the U.S. or fit a Western reductionist paradigm.

We need to welcome other ways of knowing, other proven ways of healing, other equally legitimate paradigms of healing that address the roots of dis-ease—NOT only the leaves of the tree (aka symptoms) and finally teach nutrition and holistic thinking to doctors medical schools AND children in elementary schools so the latter need fewer visits in adulthood to the former!

Ever since The (racist, sexist and highly discriminatory) Flexner Report of 1910, the U.S. medical industrial complex has become really good at picking off leaves, selling you the fertilizer and calling it healthcare. (But that’s a story for another post, another day. 🙂

I don’t know if New Amsterdam will really address all of this.

But from what I’ve seen so far, it may be a giant leap in the right direction to start a new conversation around health, healing and healthcare in this country!

And I look forward to taking part.

A TV doctor who creates a controversy for the purpose of bringing life and humanity into healing again for better patient and health outcomes is one I want to support.

What about you? Will you be tuning in to either of these? Let me know in the comments below what YOU are looking forward to.