Through the decades, our family interacted with Dr. Benson purely a social level, although - like clockwork - conversation would evolve into "all things medicine." My dad was always very corny, and - no matter what - he loved to introduce Dr. Beeson as "Sir Paul Beeson." Like a boy, he was infatuated with Dr. Beeson being knighted for his work at Oxford.
- Richard Allen Root
Dr. Root was Chief of Medicine at the Seattle VA Medical Center and Harborview during Paul Beeson's tenure in Seattle as a VA Distinguished Professor. Both would rarely miss the VA's famous Tuesday morning clinical conferences. These small-group teaching rounds, beginning in 1974 and continuing into the early 1990s, were hallmarks of Beeson'sn then Root's bedside teaching model.
As Chief of Medicine, Dr. Root had administrative oversight of the residency program and clinical teaching activities. His formal role entailed supporting and facilitating educational initiatives—especially those involving such a revered figure as Dr. Beeson. Root's own legacy as the first Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington further underscores the deep philosophical alignment and mentorship lineage between the two.
These conferences helped define the intellectual and clinical culture of the VA system and the Department of Medicine at UW.
Dr. Robert G. Petersdorf, a longtime colleague of Beeson from Yale and former Chair of Medicine at UW, was instrumental in bringing Beeson to Seattle. The institutional structure he helped establish was later carried forward by Dr. Root, making both men critical to sustaining the environment in which Beeson's teaching thrived.
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