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The Art and Science of Medicine

Joseph F. Majdan, MD, FEL ’81, FACP, FCCP

Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Proficiency Remediation

Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Joseph F. Majdan, MD, FEL ’81, FACP, FCCP

For postgrad alumnus Joseph F. Majdan, MD, FEL ’81, associate professor of medicine and director of clinical proficiency remediation at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, becoming a doctor was his lifelong goal.

“There never was a day in my life when I did not want to become a physician,” Majdan says. “Medicine, still at my stage of life, takes my breath away. Being in medicine is the reason I believe I was put here on Earth, to help my fellow man and to teach and mentor the future generations of medical students and residents.”

He and his wife, Anita, have generously established a scholarship for medical students from underrepresented demographics who have a demonstrated financial need. They have also signed a bequest to leave their estate to Jefferson to fund a fully endowed scholarship in perpetuity.

Seeing students like him who need financial assistance to attend medical school resonates deeply with Majdan, who recalls having to work in a factory and clean offices at age 15 in order to save up for school tuition. “It wasn’t easy for me to get where I am today,” he shares. “Yet, I had a dream, an unwavering belief that my vocation was to become a physician. I see medical students like me who have parents like I had who had to scrimp and save for everything to provide their children with an education. As the ability to be seen by a physician and receive healthcare in its truest expression should be universally available to all, so should the opportunity for qualified students from all diverse backgrounds who are in financial need be provided the financial support to attend medical school. My wife and I firmly believe in this and wish to ease the financial burden for these students to attend our medical school.”

The Majdans hope their generosity will spur more such scholarships. They say a scholarship perpetuates the future of medicine in all aspects, both in the delivery of healthcare to cities and towns needing it and in the continuance of fostering diversity and inclusiveness in medicine.

An encounter as a child with his general practitioner, alumnus Francis Thomas, MD ’44, when he was ill helped to lead Majdan on his path to Jefferson.

“Dr. Thomas came to my home to see me,” Majdan shares. “There was something comforting, truly caring coming from him. He was talking to me as a person. I was so scared, yet his smile, his voice, comforted me. I had always previously kept telling him that I wanted to be a doctor.”

At the end of the house call, Thomas gifted the young boy a letter opener. “Dr. Thomas said, ‘Some day when you have your office, I want you to put this on your desk so you can remember me and our time together,’” Majdan says. Today, more than 60 years later, that letter opener still sits in a place of honor on his desk. He says, “I often tell that story to our medical students and show them the letter opener.”

Majdan came to Jefferson as a fellow in cardiology in 1979 and opened a practice at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital following his fellowship in 1981. “As I got to know and love Jefferson,” he says, “I found that it professed those principles of medicine both tangible and intangible that I strove for—excellence in medical care delivered in a caring and humanistic manner that touched, respected the essence of our patients, the human spirit.”  

For Majdan, Jefferson is a wonderful example of all that is right and noble about medicine. “It defines and continues to define itself, not just in providing excellent care and groundbreaking discoveries and research,” he says. “Jefferson has never forgotten that the cornerstone of medicine must be the doctor-patient relationship, and that we must always see the humanity first in our patients.”

In 1981 he began his teaching career. In those 44 years of teaching, several generations of Jefferson medical students have learned from Majdan, many now introducing themselves as the children of former students. “I continue to find a great sense of fulfillment and happiness in teaching or simply sitting and talking with a student or two who have stopped by my office to talk or have called me at home,” he says. “My door is always open for students and our graduates. Hopefully, I have sown in them the seed to continue to teach, to profess, and to live by the principles and traditions of medicine that I have sought to instill in our students. Teaching is like dropping a pebble in a still pond and watching the ripples move away. When you teach a student, they will pass the knowledge on to their students, and those students pass it on to their students: like the ripples in the pond, those principles of medicine continue and will never end.”

Majdan was director of the third-year internal medicine clerkship for 10 years. In 2005, he joined the faculty of the Dr. Robert and Dorothy Rector Clinical Skills and Simulation Center at Jefferson. He continues teaching medical students to this day, developing and sharpening their physical examination skills, developing their skills at focused history, and helping them learn the process of formulating differential diagnoses. “I still do physical examination at the bedside,” he says. “I not only demonstrate the approach to the physical exam and physical findings, but I also talk to our students about the intangibles of relating to these patients. During these rounds, I have often been inspired by the mature insight and compassion that our medical students possess.”

His students never forget Majdan’s teachings. “I always say, ‘It’s the history, history, history, history,’” he says. “I tell my students that to be a true physician, you must develop yourself not just in the science of medicine, but in the art of medicine.”

Majdan shares his great, unwavering faith in medicine and those who will follow in his footsteps. “I have every confidence that our Jefferson heritage, principles, and philosophy will continue,” he shares. “After my wife, Anita, and I are gone, our scholarship will continue in perpetuity; and in so doing, we will ensure that the education of future doctors will continue and that those intangibles, principles, and traditions that have defined the Jefferson physician continue.”