MAURICE BERNSTEIN, M.D.
Maurice Bernstein, M.D.
His Younger Years
started when he was born in 1930. At age 5 he told everybody that he wanted to become a doctor. They just smiled and said "We'll see!" And that was the beginning of his career.
His Next Years
involved going to high school in Anaheim (before Disneyland) and entering the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and losing. He entered UCLA and didn't lose. After graduating as a Zoology major, he got his Masters degree in Physiology (The Cutaneous Axone Reflex). But medicine was still his goal and after 4 years at UCLA School of Medicine's 4th class, he became a doctor. And everybody smiled and asked "What kind of a doctor will you be?"
The Professional Years
followed internship at Philadelphia General Hospital and a medical residency at LA County-USC Medical Center. He married a Swiss girl and shortly thereafter two daughters came along and completed the family. What came next was 22 years of the independent practice of internal medicine in the San Fernando Valley. It was fee for service medicine. But as times changed, it became more difficult to run an office on this basis. About 10 years ago he became a member of an excellent multispecialty clinic that practices good medicine in these days of HMOs and he has been quite content. He retired recently.
For most of his professional years, he participated in teaching medical students, interns and residents at the University of Southern California and the associated Los Angeles County Medical Center. For the past 12 years as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine he has been facilitating the learning of first year USC medical students in their "Introduction to Clinical Medicine" course. He has had interest in medical ethics for many years and has been on the ethics committees of two hospitals and at present is chairman of one of them. Over the years, he has seen many changes in the practice of medicine, in terms of diagnosis, therapy and delivery and also has seen the development of ethical issues which were hardly dreamed of years ago. It is these changes and the challenge of attempting to understand and help each patient that has kept medicine fresh and interesting for him.
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Latest update of this page 11/3/2000