Making Rounds

Muffie Meyer, who co-directed and co-edited the classic documentary Grey Gardens, helms this compelling portrait of Drs. Valentin Fuster and Herschel Sklaroff, two cardiologists at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. As the film's title suggests, the doctors make their rounds and speak at length with patients in the hospital's Cardiac Care Unit while accompanied by young doctors-in-training. The work is not easy, by any stretch, with challenges coming from the patients (including a man suffering from heart failure who adamantly refuses to accept prescribed treatment) and the medical system itself (some patients have previously misdiagnosed issues). While the film touches on many problems that bedevil Mount Sinai Hospital and the wider U.S. healthcare environment, the core focus of Making Rounds is on the charming doctors, who spend liberal amounts of time listening to their patients' needs and communicating their diagnoses with an impressive sense of both maturity and sincerity. In many ways, Fuster and Sklaroff represent a higher standard of physician care, and one can only hope that their acolytes will carry on their noble tradition. Recommended. (P. Hall)