|
|
      |
 |
      |
 |
|
 |
|
|
The Tennessean Post Mortem: It was a typical weekday for Dr. Bruce Levy. Leaving his wife and 18-month-old son sleeping at their home on the west
side of town, he got to the Metro medical examiner's office, on the grounds
of the old Nashville General Hospital by 7:30 a.m. He did some paperwork before donning protective gear to perform two autopsies -- removing, examining and cataloging organs, with the help of a medical resident and three technicians -- and then driving to the Metro Courthouse to testify in a murder trial. And that was all before lunch. Levy is a busy and a happy man, two years after moving here from New York City to take over Metro's troubled medical examiner's office. He said he is often "amazed by the waste of life" when he examines the bodies of young homicide victims, but he enjoys his work "very much." "I consider myself fortunate that I've found something to do that makes me enjoy getting up and coming to work every day," Levy said in an interview recently. But why would a physician want to work on a patient after the battle to save that life has already been lost? A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York Medical College, Levy said he had initially planned to go into neurology. "I'd always been fascinated with the functioning of the brain, and I'd done some research along those lines. But I found treating neurology patients to be very, very depressing. "A lot of them were people with degenerative diseases, and there was little you could do for them except to monitor their deterioration. At that point, I decided I needed to find something else to do." Levy said pathology presented "a huge intellectual challenge," since the study of all diseases and their effects requires knowledge of "all the different specialties." He faced an early professional challenge when an older doctor expressed disapproval of his determination to find the cause of death of an elderly woman patient who had chronic heart problems. Levy said an autopsy showed that the woman had committed suicide by taking an overdose of one of her heart medications. "I found her stomach full of pills" and tested them, he said. But the woman's attending physician said Levy should have "flushed the pills down the sink and forgotten about them," to avoid disturbing the family. "It was probably right there, at that moment that I decided I was going to be a medical examiner. I found that attitude unacceptable. I thought that the lady's family was better off knowing the truth." The pathologist, who turned 39 on June 30, said he sometimes feels "like I'm wearing six different hats." He is the Metro medical examiner, chief medical examiner of the state of Tennessee and president of Forensic Medical, the private company which has staffed the local medical examiner's office since July 1997. Forensic Medical is a subsidiary of Associated Pathologists, a large medical practice group based in Brentwood. Levy and two other Forensic Medical pathologists perform about 650 autopsies a year at the Metro morgue on people who die in Davidson County and they also do a much smaller number of autopsies for Forensic Medical at Williamson Medical Center in Franklin on people who die in Williamson and five other Midstate counties. As state medical examiner, Levy is trying to standardize and improve the quality of autopsy services across the state and he is involved in planning for the new Middle Tennessee post mortem facility that the state Department of Health is preparing to build four miles north of downtown, overlooking Ellington Parkway. "The law doesn't give me any authority over anybody," Levy said. "My role as the state medical examiner is basically as a consultant, a resource available to the county medical examiners, the district attorneys, the public defenders." He has helped to draw up a training manual for county medical examiners -- the first new one in more than 20 years -- and he says he hopes to arrange regional meetings of the county medical examiners, who usually have little contact with one another. Levy said he also wants to make greater use of the reams of records that the state medical examiner's office keeps on deaths across the state. "We hope to be able to generate statistics on patterns of death through out Tennessee." The post of chief state medical examiner had been vacant for almost three years when Levy was appointed in March 1983. He had worked for the New York City medical examiner's office for five years -- four years in the Bronx and one year in Manhattan -- before moving to Nashville. "We were looking to leave New York. It's a wonderful city, but it's a very difficult, very expensive place. "It wasn't the kind of place where we wanted to raise children." He said he and his wife "love Nashville." "I see no reason
that I would want to leave here." |
|
 |
|
Forensic
Medical Home
| Our Staff | Our
Company | Services
| Inside Forensics
| In the News |
