Saturday, June 25, 2011
Maimonideen Moment
We had a dinner to celebrate the retirement of a great doctor tonight. Like many doctors, he really wasnt retiring just scaling back to one day a week. Throughout his career, he never asked if people could pay, infact, many times he never charged. He never turned anyone away. As we spoke of our esteem for him, someone said something that just struck me. It summed up what we are and who we are. To paraphrase: " As physicians, we see all regardless of their race, income, predjudice, social class. Those we see entrust and share with us their souls in the form of their fears, aspirations and worries. We see all as equals in gods eyes and we never see a patient anything but a fellow creature in pain. We are entrusted with the souls of our patients, to provide comfort for their pain and to watch over them. This is our calling, a calling that exists forever and can not be recended, it can only be passed on with greater understanding of its dimentions."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
That was beautiful.The whole thing.
"Those we see entrust and share with us their souls " Another blogging doc ..a surgeon refers to it as a "sacred trust"
It's true.
And is why it is so difficult to transition to new doctors when you have to. You can only hope they will be as good as what you left. But ...quality medical relationships take time to establish. Sure you can be healed/fixed ...but to establish a trusting bond takes awhile before you get to know all the quirks and details and personality.
He must've been a very special doctor and his patients must've loved him dearly... as do his colleagues. :)
training ...past and ongoing ..it must be weird ..hard to let it go. How do you just stop being a doctor when your whole life has been geared toward it?
Post a Comment