I am leaving my surgical practice at the end of June 2019. I can proudly say as I leave that my patient scores are highest, and my operating room efficiency, and reputation, the best. I have always wanted to stop operating when people asked “Why?” instead of “What took him so long?” I will miss my patients and I am sure I will miss surgery, but my mother had a saying, “Everything has its time.” As my wife Marilyn and I have gotten older we understand what she meant.
I have several projects that will occupy my time and provide enjoyment: I am writing two more books and I need time to write them well. Writing is a hard job! I will spend more time with Operation Walk because it is growing and needs my time. We now have twenty chapters in the U.S., two in Canada, one in Ireland, and as many as five more ready to start in the
U.S., in addition to two in Europe and one in Thailand that needs our guidance. Jeri Ward and Mary Ellen Sieben (my long- time nurses ), Lisa Fujimoto-Yamaguchi ,PA and Marilyn, will all be intimately involved in this growth. These women have volunteered countless hours over the past 20+ years to help sustain the Operation Walk program through changes in politics, war, recession, and other major hurdles.
When a surgeon stops operating, he does not abandon his patients. Later in this post, we will list our suggestions for surgeons should you need hip or knee replacement surgery or treatment. These are surgeons that I have trained in my surgical and patient care methods, or who we know are good. For instance, Dr. William Long was in practice with me for twenty years before I decided to finish my career in academics, and his practice is a mirror of ours because two of his mentors were Jeri and Mary Ellen! Jeri or I will be glad to give advice and options to any of you who need a replacement surgeon (pun intended!).
As I leave, I must thank each of you, my patients, for allowing me to treat you and operate on you. It is no small trust given to me for you to be anesthetized and operated on, and I always tried to honor that trust. My data says we were successful with 95% of the close to 15,000 patients I operated myself. The ones who haunt me the most are those who had a complication and did not get an optimal result. Medicine is a highly rewarding profession because as a doctor I served people, but it is deeply depressing too when the trust put into me was not fulfilled. I have had many sleepless nights thinking of solutions for complications and complex problems so other doctors could learn from them.
I would not have changed a moment of my career. God intended for me to be a doctor, he gave me great hands and judgement, and through all my research to improve surgery and patient care, and my founding of Operation Walk, I have always strived to fulfill my potential. I am now in the winter of my life, and the work of medicine must be pas sed on to the younger generation as it has been done through all previous generations. Medicine changed profoundly during my years, and I worry that succeeding generations will be able to maintain the quality of care we provided because the focus now i s on access at the cost of quality. In large medical centers, like a university, the process can be more important than the people. But medicine has been resilient and always progressive, so I leave with hope.
God bless you all! – Dr. Larry Dorr, June 2019
Visit the Dorr Institute For Arthritis Research And Education site for more information