Physicians and the Care of the Chronically Ill

To the Editor: I am reluctant to accept Dr. Gillick's recommendation that other disciplines — the “nursing, social work, and rehabilitation” professions — should have primary responsibility for patients in chronic-disease hospitals (Jan. 19 issue).* I am responsible for medical service on an infirmary ward at a geriatric psychiatric hospital. In the two years that I have been here, patients with bizarre, unusual, and rare diseases have undergone diagnosis and on occasion have been helped by the devoted care of my physician colleagues. Aged persons with cholelithiasis, amyloidosis, meningioma, the empty sella turcica syndrome, hypergammaglobulinemia, myasthenia gravis, and acute renal.