Picker Adventures: Peering through a 55-year retrospectoscope

What links “the world’s most beautiful” violin, a schloss in Salsburg, and a bank president who curses a lot? All are covered in this inspiring talk from Picker’s founding Chair, Dr Tom Delbanco, who traces his own 55-year career, the development of person centred care, and the roots of the Picker Institute. Far from just a history lesson, this talk provides insight into how the idea of person centred care grew and gained acceptance, as well as how now mainstream ideas around understanding and measuring people’s experiences of care gained prominence.  

We were honoured to welcome Tom for this talk at Picker in April 2024 and we are pleased now to share it. We hope that you will find it as interesting and engaging as we did. For further information about Picker and our work, please do explore our website: a good place to start would be the Picker Principles of Person Centred Care, a framework for understanding what matters most to most people that is based on original research described in this talk.  

Dr Tom Delbanco, MD, MACP

Tom Delbanco, M.D., is the John F. Keane & Family Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Educated at Harvard College and the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr Delbanco trained in internal medicine at Bellevue, Harlem, and Presbyterian Hospitals in New York. Following military service, he came to Boston where he was Chief of the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a unit he founded and led for more than 30 years.

At the former Beth Israel Hospital, Dr. Delbanco created one of the first primary care practice and teaching programs at an academic health center, and in 1979 he developed and led the Harvard Medical School Faculty Development and Fellowship Program that has now trained more than 400 general internists for academic careers.

One of five founders of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), an organisation of 3,000 physicians and social scientists in academic general internal medicine, he served as its President in 1986. He was the founding Chair of the Picker Institutes in the USA and Europe, organisations that document patient experiences with care and work with patients to improve health services. He has led four Salzburg Global Seminars and spent a year in the US Congress as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow.

Dr Delbanco has authored more than 200 scholarly papers and has co-edited three books: Alcoholism: A Guide for the Primary Care Physicians; Manual of Clinical Evaluation: Strategies for Cost-Effective Care; and, Through the Patients’ Eyes. He wrote and directed an award-winning film and educational DVD, “When Things Go Wrong: Voices of Patients and Families.” He created and was senior editor for 15 years of a monthly case study series, “Clinical Crossroads,” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).