DOCTORS OF INTEREST
The PATIENT PRACTITIONER
As a boy in Cuba, Leonardo Mandina admired his
80
grandfather’s horses. Little did he know after fleeing
the communist rule of Fidel Castro in 1961, he
would become a world-renowned breeder of magnificent
Andalusian horses and the old-school family doctor for
generations of Vero Beach residents.
A successful shop owner in Havana, Mandina’s father
wanted no part of communist Cuba and he put the family
on a plane to Miami with little more than the clothes on their
backs. They were allowed to take a suitcase with no more
than 77 pounds of clothes. “We arrived with nothing,” said
Mandina, who was 8 when he left Cuba. “My mother and
father worked in a factory. I worked all through high school
and college. I never got a handout.”
After the University of Miami and medical school in Spain,
Mandina completed his residency in Indiana. He knew he
wanted to come back to Florida and after offers from all over
the state, Indian River Medical Center hired him as its emergency
room doctor.
“The ER job gave me an opportunity to look at Vero
Beach,” he said. “I thought Vero was a nice, quiet, little town.
The ER was fast-paced and it could get busy.”
He remembered the night a boat with several teenagers
slammed into a bridge. It was not a good outcome, he said.
Another time, a man walked right into the emergency room
carrying his son who was not breathing and handed him to
Mandina. The boy had died.
After that busy first year, Mandina opened his family practice,
which has had 22,000 patients over the years. He still keeps
records by hand, instead of the government-mandated digital
files. Medical files line the walls behind the reception desk.
“I still draw the blood from patients 95 percent of the time
because it gives me more time with them,” Mandina said. “I
try to be human with my patients. You have to give the patient
attention and you have to have close contact with their
eyes. We are losing that while doctors look at screens.
“I don’t have electronic records. If you think your medical
records are private, you are kidding yourself. If I was 30 years
old, I would embrace it, but I am comfortable with what I am
doing. We have become mechanical like an assembly line.
Patients don’t like it and they feel they are not getting the
attention they need. Sometimes we can help them feel better
without taking out the prescription pad.
“It is a rushed world, but you have to give the patient a
chance to air what is wrong,” he continued. “I spend time
with them and by getting to know the patients, I like to
develop a relationship with them. Many of my patients have
become my friends. The nonmedical part of it is the most dif-
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GREG GARDNER
One of the longest serving family doctors in Vero Beach, Leo Mandina has hand-written records of the more than 22,000 patients he has seen during his career.
BY GREG GARDNER
Treasure Coast Medical Report