“Do you have family members who care about you?”
I still remember the first time I set foot in my Family Practice residency outpatient clinic in Minnesota. A jubilant Family Medicine resident who wanted to be every doctor, nurse, medical assistant, and office staff’s best friend and colleague.
Consequently, I was elated to be in a caring team whose sole purpose and mission was to deliver great medical care to regularly scheduled patients. One of my team members was a medical assistant in her thirties who roomed patients, checked their vitals, and assisted me to meet their medical needs. We were an awesome team, or that what I thought. I did my best to be very pleasant, friendly, encouraging, and kind every time we worked together.
Shakedown
But alas, all my nostalgic feelings of great camaraderie and teamship came to a standstill. The residency clinic manager summoned me to her office and said that my medical assistant officially complained to her about me. Something about leaving a piece of paper in the wrong work area!
“What? She said that…but why, I don’t understand. We’re supposed to be a team who work together and care for one another. She could’ve told me,” I said barely able to hide my deep disappointment. The imaginary team comradeship I believed to be real turned out to be wishful thinking. I was a naive medical student just turned doctor who envisioned compassion, caring, grace, and unity always prevail among all. I was hurt.
Sensing my dismay, shock, and disappointment, the caring residency clinic manager looked at me with compassion and said, ” Do you have family members who care about you?”. It took me some time to understand the depth and wisdom of her question. Probably, she was able to see my aspiration to be part of a compassionate and caring medical team. A new physician who wanted to face the complex challenges of medical care; diseases and death; united in a team and not divided.
Chasing Compassion
The journey of being a physician starting with medical school, through years of residency, and unto the many years of practice are marred by many undesirable moments where no compassion is found. Moments and experiences where grace, mercy and compassion seem at times to cease.
Whether we’re in medicine or not, the question, ” Do you have family members who care about you?”, rings true to each one of us. We all crave, need, and live our lives chasing compassion. When I’m treated with grace mercy, and compassion, I feel valued, loved and appreciated.
Love is nothing but lust, and fake useless nice and polished words without genuine words and acts of mercy and compassion.
Certainly, we need compassion to pick us up, and keep us going in a life where all of us , doctors, patients, men, women, rich and poor of all races, experience more shakedowns and letdowns than we care to remember.
Finding & Giving Away Compassion
In a dog eat dog world where compassion can be illusive and hard to find even among friends, lovers, and family members, generations before us found their solace in this divine words “Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.” Lamentations 3:22 (New King James Version)
Many years after my residency clinic manager asked me, ” Do you have family members who care about you?”, my patients gradually became like family members to care for. Each one of us is that family member meant to care about patients and others in their moments of joy, laughter, failures, tears, and fears. After all, I know how much divine mercy and compassion, and the compassion of many people, have blessed me and changed my life. Our life are forever changed and renewed with compassion.
Finally, I know ( and I’m sure you do too) the hurt and loneliness of being denied compassion, whether in a small residency clinic in Minnesota or elsewhere. But, I also know the dignity, value, and the love felt and experienced when I’m touched by compassion. We all do.
Hence, this is our calling as healers, and human beings; chase after compassion, find it, fully receive it, and freely give it to others.