No Doctor is an Island

No doctor is an island " expand the knowledge base of PH and the complexities of diagnosis and management of this group of patients " ; and lobbying power, " to create a force that will have levels of influence on many facets of PH management in Australia and New Zealand. " [3] (See the PHSANZ abstracts published in this issue of Pulmonary Circulation). they were joined by still more people in San Diego; and at Malta there were 25 experts from around the world. Since coming into existence, the PVRI has sponsored meetings throughout the world — India, China, Brazil, and nations in Africa and the Middle East — and has held annual conferences in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Panama, and in 2012, Cape Town, South Africa. The success and ever-increasing popularity of all these meetings and conferences is due very largely to the fact that they feature discussions and debates, meaning conversations rather than speeches.The international collaboration initiated by the PVRI in supporting PVD-related educational programs and research in the Third World, where the vast majority of people afflicted with PVDs live, has assumed vital significance in controlling these diseases. By January 2007, in Malta, when the idea of the original conversation, the PVRI, had become a reality, a new conversation began. Led by Jason Yuan, the attendees discussed and debated the necessity of the PVRI having its own " voice " in print. This led first to the launching in 2008 of the PVRI Review and then, only 3 years later, to the publication both of this journal, Pulmonary Circulation, aimed specifically at the pulmonary circulation and " A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. " —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) What the 17th-Century English poet said about people in general, that " No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main, " [1] is especially true for doctors and all the other people in all the medical professions. And on that " continent " called Medicine, the single most crucial medical tool is: conversations. Spoken words are like oxygen, so common as to be ignored but essential for life. A recent study found that, on average, people speak about 16,000 words per day. [2] But speaking is not at all the same as having …