A DETERMINED SON MAKES HIS FATHER PROUD
Jared Schulman, M.D. '04, M.P.H. '04, and Melvin Schulman, M.D. '65
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Jared Schulman, M.D. '04, M.P.H. '04, gets a hug from his dad, Melvin Schulman, M.D. '65 |
Anyone who answered "true" hasn't talked to Melvin Schulman, M.D. '65, whose son, Jared, earned both his medical and public health degrees last spring. "I told him not to do it," Dr. Schulman says, matter of fact. "I said, ‘I'll give you a couple hundred thousand dollars to start a business.'"
Dr. Schulman, a retired ophthalmologist with a biting sense of humor, isn't joking. He's proud of his son, a first-year orthopaedic resident at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in New Brunswick. But he wanted Jared to choose a career where the satisfaction outweighs the kind of aggravation that convinced him to retire earlier than he'd planned.
"I would have continued practicing for another five or six years, but I had to see twice the amount of patients to make the same income and even then it was hard to fund my pension plan," says Dr. Schulman, who devoted his 35-year career to running a New Brunswick ophthalmology practice that had been in his family for 80 years. "I don't believe physicians today in many fields can earn a decent living," he says. "The insurance companies are taking all the profit. Unless doctors stand up to them, we're in trouble."
Shrinking income is only one piece of Dr. Schulman's discontent. He is also upset by the growing gap between those who can and cannot afford medical care. "We have evolved from the most wonderful form of medicine in the world into a second class medical system," he says. "There are going to be two standards of medical care— one for the wealthy and one for the poor. And the one for the poor isn't going to be pretty."
None of Dr. Schulman's arguments could discourage Jared from wanting to be a doctor, which, in a way, is his own doing. After all, he started bringing Jared on rounds at St. Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick when the boy was five years old. Jared enjoyed the hospital environment so much that by the time he was a teenager he was pushing patients on stretchers from their room to the operating room. Soon he was setting up operating rooms for surgery. "The head of the OR liked him so much she made him into an operating tech," Dr. Schulman recalls, proudly. "Instead of an intern or resident handing instruments to the surgeons, Jared did it. He would scrub in on every case."
None of Dr. Schulman's arguments could discourage Jared from wanting to be a doctor ...
In 2002 Dr. Schulman offered Jared the family-owned practice, thinking they might work together. When Jared chose orthopaedics, Dr. Schulman chose retirement. "I miss being a physician, doing surgery, seeing many of my old patients," he says. But, he adds, "I don't miss fighting with the insurance companies." Whether or not Jared joins that fight, he is happy with the career he has chosen. And his dad is grateful that his son is happy. "When he was in medical school he said, ‘Dad, I love it, I love it,'" Dr. Schulman offers. "I'm very proud of him."