Ralph D. Feigin, 70; pediatrician built Baylor and Texas Children's Hospital into major teaching institutions
Dr. Ralph D. Feigin, the pediatrician who built the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital into major teaching and research institutions and who wrote the book on children's infectious diseases, died Aug. 14 at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. He was 70.
Although he was not a smoker, Feigin had been battling lung cancer for 10 months. He had entered the hospital the previous weekend to undergo an experimental treatment.
When Feigin joined Baylor in 1977, the pediatrics department was a backwater with 39 faculty members and federal research funding totaling a mere $355,000 per year. The affiliated Texas Children's Hospital averaged about 7,000 inpatients per year, 9,000 outpatients and 9,000 emergency room visits.
Under Feigin's leadership as chairman of the department of pediatrics, physician-in-chief at Texas Children's and ultimately president and chief executive of Baylor, the department has become the nation's largest and one of its best, with 539 faculty members and annual federal funding of $89 million. The hospital serves 22,000 inpatients, 500,000 outpatients and 85,000 emergency room visitors each year.
Feigin trained more than 2,000 pediatricians and pediatric specialists. Among those, two became medical school deans, 22 became associate deans, 10 became pediatric department chairmen, and 180 became pediatric section heads.
Feigin prided himself on knowing all of Baylor's medical students and pediatric residents. Every month, he and his wife, psychologist Judith Zobel Feigin, hosted two birthday parties -- one for medical students with birthdays that month and one for residents.
Blessed with an encyclopedic memory, Feigin routinely stunned students with his knowledge of infectious diseases and diagnostic principles. Despite his busy administrative schedule, he conducted teaching rounds twice a week, called "stump Feigin" sessions, in which students would present him with their most perplexing cases.
Without consulting any reference materials, Feigin would lead the residents through the diagnostic steps required and all the possible causes of the patients' illnesses. The goal, he said, was to teach the students how to find a diagnosis quickly and cost-effectively.
Reflecting his acumen, Feigin received the Senior Class Outstanding Teacher Award at Baylor every year from 1979 to 1986.
