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The Richmond County Medical Society of Staten Island, N.Y. has named rehabilitation specialist Jack B. D’Angelo ’81 its 199th president.
D’Angelo has served on various committees and in several executive positions since joining the society over 10 years ago. He strongly supports its mission of encouraging and serving physicians.
“I believe it is the only official voice of physicians in the health care system and that it is an organization that represents our professionalism and the high ethical standards that we are supposed to maintain,” he says. “We are one of the few professions that get out of bed in the middle of the night to [help someone] without worrying about payment.”
D’Angelo has very specific goals for the medical society as president. He wants to reunite physicians with a high level of professionalism and reignite their love of medicine. Citing physician burnout due to lawsuits and onslaughts of paperwork unrelated to patient care, D’Angelo emphasizes the need to remind physicians of their work’s importance.
“Many of us have sacrificed 15 years of our lives to do this and we have forgotten the joy of medicine and the joy of helping someone,” says D’Angelo. “Reminding professionals of that will make their day better and will make the patient’s level of health care better.”
A religion graduate, D’Angelo says his academic experience at Lafayette changed his outlook on life and ultimately helped him become a better physician.
“It grounded me in a higher level of ethical decision making and seeing the world through other people’s eyes,” he says. “As a physician, that is what I’m doing. I have to see, from the patient’s point of view, what’s really going on and identify the real problem. It has empowered me with patients, and it’s made me able to do that.”