After contributing 50 years of resounding leadership at Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Deeb Salem will be celebrated on Friday, May 19th with the dedication of The Salem Building at 35 Kneeland Street on the TMC campus. Sampan had the honor of interviewing with Dr. Salem on the eve of this lifetime recognition.
“ I come from an immigrant family and grew up in Brooklyn. My parents had almost no education. My mother came from Syria and my father came from Lebanon. Their whole existence was to be sure my sister and I became educated. They worked for many years, seven days a week. Those hours were spent at their restaurant, on top of which we all lived. It was in New York City, in Bay Ridge…If you’ve ever seen the movie Saturday Night Fever, that was the neighborhood I grew up in…”
In those early days of helping in the restaurant and keeping up with his studies, Salem’s father gave him an important choice that defined his career. “My father was very strict… It seemed that I couldn’t get away with anything. Because even though my parents weren’t, quote, ‘home’, they were always home because for me to get out of the house I had to get through them. My sister became a physician as well. So that was my start. They [my parents] managed to take care of us even though they were working incredible hours… I had to either study or work in the restaurant… I hated working in their restaurant, so I made sure I studied and made good grades throughout my time and throughout high school in Brooklyn.”
His excitement for medicine manifested in a way that kept him devoted to it to this day. “It wasn’t a passion then,” he said, “but… my parents were unbelievably happy at the thought of me becoming a physician… The miracle that happened is at the beginning of the medical school part. I started becoming very very interested. I was sort of an average sort of student until we started seeing patients. Once we started that, I knew this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” His dedication to his patients and concern not only with their physical health, but mental well-being and happiness with every visit became an important part of how he treated people and how he taught others.
After a November 2020 episode of “The Medicine Mentors” podcast, Dr. Deeb Salem coined the term, The Golden Rule, an approach that focused on the feelings of his patients before and after the visit, The Golden Rule extends far, and has been one of the cornerstones of his practice. “Sometimes you deal with very terrible things as a cardiologist, treating heart disease.” Dr. Deeb Salem said, “But can you do something so that after they see you, they feel a little better than before they saw you. I invented the term golden rule just off that podcast but it has been my golden rule and I have taught it to students. Someone I taught five, ten years ago, after they left medical school they go, ‘Deeb, boy what you told me really works!’ And there are a lot of books that are written about doctor/patient relationships and what you should do. And I feel my little rule trumps all that stuff. If you can tell that the patient is feeling better after they saw you then you have done your job.” However, he takes it further than just his patients. “Sometimes, I try to also bring it into my administrative side.” Dr. Deeb Salem contemplated the difficulties of it. “That becomes a little more complicated. But I do think that when I meet with people I am no longer the chair of medicine. I did that job for 21 years at Tufts. When I was running a big department, I tried to get people to feel better. It was more challenging sometimes than it was with patients. It’s not a bad way to try to do things. Sometimes you deal with people that are not behaving well and you have to find ways to take care of that.”
From being a professor to becoming the Chief of Cardiology at Tufts, extending into being President of the New England Cardiovascular Society and the founding President of the New England Affiliate of the American Heart Association Dr. Deeb Salem has received numerous awards throughout his career and has held several different leadership and board positions that continued and solidified his influence on the medical and immigrant communities. His legacy though consists of much more. “The legacy will be the people I have trained and worked with.” Deeb commented. “This is close to fifty years, believe it or not. The legacy I have given them is not just that I taught them medicine but taught them this rule of trying to make people feel better after they have seen you. I guess part two is that I have taken care of patients from years ago, that their children have become patients of mine…I’ve done a fair amount of research and that is part of the legacy.”
“We are in a golden age,” he continued. “But I also feel that in another ten or fifteen years there’s more we can do for patients; the other side is the business of medicine has become disturbing. The administrative, the whole relationship with insurance companies and all that has taken its toll on how we practice…. But I have been blessed with doing something where when I get up to go to work I couldn’t wait to get to work.” As much as he enjoys work, he also enjoys being able to go home to family. “How lucky is it that I picked a field that I really love doing things, seeing patients, lecturing. I love teaching…I am a happy guy, and I can’t believe that there will be some remembrance of me with this building… I’m so proud of that.” Dr. Deeb Salem’s commemoration and christening of his building will commence on Friday, May 19th, at the Wolff Auditorium Medical Center from 2:30pm-5pm.
