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Practitioner: Spirit of caring compassion has infiltrated physician’s every interaction with patients
By Susan L. Peña, Contributing Writer
Dr. Wayne Bond Lau, winner of the Philadelphia County Medical Society’s 2021 Practitioner of the Year Award, is quick to credit his parents, HonKay and Meifong, for instilling in him a sense of obligation to care for others, long before he earned his credentials in emergency medicine.
It was the reason he and his younger sister Bonnie, also an emergency physician, decided to pursue medicine.
And it also motivated both of them to volunteer at the Chinatown Clinic at Holy Redeemer Church every week.
That spirit of caring and compassion has infiltrated Lau’s every interaction with patients in the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s emergency department.
Lau was inspired to go into emergency medicine because “when people come into the ED, they’re scared, and there’s so much happening,” he said. “You have 10 seconds to make people trust you. That’s a big challenge, to make a connection with someone and show them you can be trusted, that you care. The allure of that has never left me.”
The key to gaining that trust, Lau said, is “you really have to listen. A lot of physicians talk at people rather than listening to what they’re saying. You have to recognize that at any given time, you could be in that person’s shoes. It gives you a humility and groundedness, and having kindness in your heart.”
Lau remembers when he was 13 and his grandmother was in a terrible car accident, and he and his family rushed to be with her. “My memory is that the physicians never spent time with us to address our concerns and explain what was going on,” Lau said. He promised himself never to let a family go through such an ordeal. Lau, who grew up in Lansdale, was accepted into an accelerated medical program at Penn State, allowing him to finish in two years and immediately enter medical school at Thomas Jefferson University, where he also completed his residency at Jefferson Hospital. His mentor/ residency director, Dr. Sharon Griswold, encouraged him to go into emergency medicine.
A spirit of caring and compassion has infiltrated Dr. Wayne Bond Lau’s every interaction with patients in the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s emergency department. He was inspired to go into emergency medicine because “when people come into the ED, they’re scared, and there’s so much happening,” he said.
While still a resident, Bonnie, a medical student at nearby Drexel University, told him about the Chinatown Clinic, founded and directed by Dr. Vincent Zarro, where she had begun to volunteer. After Lau finished his residency, he began volunteering, and has spent every Wednesday night there from 5 to 8 ever since.
Lau said the majority of the approximately 2,000 patients who come into the clinic each year are Asian: mostly Chinese-speaking, but also Vietnamese, Korean and Indonesian. More recently, the clinic is seeing a growing number of African-Americans, Spanish-speaking patients and Caucasians. Many are undocumented, and therefore uninsurable. Many suffer from diabetes and hypertension.
“We don’t turn anybody away,” he said. “My parents came to this country to make a better life, and we’re seeing people that are also trying to make their lives better and achieve the American Dream for their children. It’s my privilege and my responsibility to take care of these people, who have nowhere else to go.”
Forced to close
In early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States, the Chinatown Clinic was forced to close because the church felt uncomfortable having patients come in. Lau, who became the clinic’s medical director three years ago when Zarro retired, set up a hotline, so patients could have their prescriptions refilled; he and his volunteers stayed in touch with their patient community, giving them guidance on their medical issues and providing referrals.
When the COVID-19 vaccines became available, they called their patients to let them know they were setting up vaccination events for the community. To their delight, they found that the majority had already been vaccinated.
“It was such a great experience to see people being receptive to the vaccine,” he said. “It was really tough to hang the sign on the door to say we were closed, and we didn’t know when we could open again.” The clinic reopened in July 2021.
Lau spends about a third of his working life in Jefferson’s emergency department as a physician, another third as a professor of emergency medicine in Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College (where he is also assistant dean of student affairs) and the remaining third doing research on cardiac ischemia, “looking into what kind of proteins might help the heart during a heart attack,” he said. “It’s a hodgepodge of a life.”
Fortunately, he finds respite at home, with his wife, Tingfang Chen, a child/adolescent psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and his daughters Audrey and Lois, ages 4 and 2.
“I’m a blessed person,” he said. “I’m surrounded by love and care.”
Future of clinic
Lau worries about the future of his beloved clinic, because the patients who use it are so vulnerable.
To ensure it will continue after his own retirement, he puts a lot of effort into selecting the right students from the many applications to volunteer.
“I try to cultivate a sense of belonging and family (among the volunteers),” he said. “My plan is to make sure to teach these students so they know how important it is to have a kind heart and care for people for the right reasons.”
When asked what he would change about the health care system in this country, Lau told about the patient navigators who work at the clinic, translating for the patients, guiding them through the process and speaking up for them when necessary.
“If every patient had a patient navigator in the ED, what a great sense of belonging and care they would have,” Lau said. “There would be less lawsuits, less miscommunication, less patient errors, and a greater feeling of being cared for.”
Lau, predictably, comes down on the side of universal health care.
“I think health care is not a privilege; it’s a right,” he said. “I will continue to do what I think is best, and inspire others to do the same. When you have more, you have a moral obligation to help those who have less. That was the most important lesson my father and mother taught me.” •
Susan L. Peña is a contributing writer to Philadelphia Medicine.
