Sunday, September 04, 2005
Truth.
A medical student writes :
"I’m sure that most, hell, I’m willing to bet ALL of us, have had at least one of those moments. Those moments when we’re seized with the “rage of the righteous”, when we desire, so strongly, so live up to the hype and the age-old ideals of our chosen profession, when we tell ourselves that medicine isn’t just a career, isn’t just another job, but a higher calling, an annointment by the fates and the gods and the powers that be, when inspiration and determination in equal measure fill our hearts and make us want to get right out there and make a difefrence."
I remembered another conversation.
Older, wiser...
...truer to life.
We sat under the sky, slumped in our chairs.
I remembered an evening even before then, when we had sat in the very same chairs, in that quaint little garden upon a building (Cafe 211) in the dark savouring a hastily chilled bottle of Muscato D' Asti.
It saddened me for a moment to remember that moment, because I sensed that those moments with her were already dying, and fast gone. They are now...
So too did it sadden me that as we drank that she would never realise, never know - never appreciate - just how rare that bottle of wine, handbought in Italy, reared in London, and airflown to Singapore - truly was... but at the moment, it was enough to watch her enjoy it, watch the tension slipping from her shoulders in the dim twilight cast by the stars, as the lights winked out (thanks to some impatient restauranteers keen to be home in their beds by midnight) and the sounds of closing-time faded away.
We spoke, he and I, two old friends, two equals cast initially from the same, but ultimately from disparate moulds, different systems.
He spoke at length about how we were all fools, kidding ourselves that our jobs were a higher calling. That there was something more to medicine, which was why we were doing it. That it didn't matter that our peers earn four times our salaries... That we worked insane hours that the pay just didn't justify. That there was some meaning which we secretly all knew kept us here, in Medicine.
That we were somehow, truly the ubermensch, that we pretended to each other that we were.
I sat and listened to him rant.
And sadly, having been immersed in the system myself now... for a mere nine months...
... I couldn't help but agree with him.
We're technicians, here. We're service providers.
We're disillusioned. We're tired.
We're broken.
And I cannot maintain my own illusions, when all around me my compatriots lie beaten, their idealism knocked out of them by an angry public, and a callous overseer.
I was proud of what I did, back in the UK.
We all were, we, the nurses, paramedics and doctors.
We chose our fate; we were all clinically insane to do it, we knew... but we chose.
Perhaps it had to do in part with the free education for the locals, and with the sheer expertise and professionalism the nurses took joy in.
None of them were in it out of anything other than committment and...insanity idealism.
Here, things are so different.
And all of us are beaten, running scared of the next complaint letter cleverly designed to obtain a fee waiver... or perhaps even of the next complaint that will have to be painstakingly covered-up... "because in this country, doctors cover for each other"
A higher calling?
It's. Just. Another. Job.
"I’m sure that most, hell, I’m willing to bet ALL of us, have had at least one of those moments. Those moments when we’re seized with the “rage of the righteous”, when we desire, so strongly, so live up to the hype and the age-old ideals of our chosen profession, when we tell ourselves that medicine isn’t just a career, isn’t just another job, but a higher calling, an annointment by the fates and the gods and the powers that be, when inspiration and determination in equal measure fill our hearts and make us want to get right out there and make a difefrence."
I remembered another conversation.
Older, wiser...
...truer to life.
We sat under the sky, slumped in our chairs.
I remembered an evening even before then, when we had sat in the very same chairs, in that quaint little garden upon a building (Cafe 211) in the dark savouring a hastily chilled bottle of Muscato D' Asti.
It saddened me for a moment to remember that moment, because I sensed that those moments with her were already dying, and fast gone. They are now...
So too did it sadden me that as we drank that she would never realise, never know - never appreciate - just how rare that bottle of wine, handbought in Italy, reared in London, and airflown to Singapore - truly was... but at the moment, it was enough to watch her enjoy it, watch the tension slipping from her shoulders in the dim twilight cast by the stars, as the lights winked out (thanks to some impatient restauranteers keen to be home in their beds by midnight) and the sounds of closing-time faded away.
We spoke, he and I, two old friends, two equals cast initially from the same, but ultimately from disparate moulds, different systems.
He spoke at length about how we were all fools, kidding ourselves that our jobs were a higher calling. That there was something more to medicine, which was why we were doing it. That it didn't matter that our peers earn four times our salaries... That we worked insane hours that the pay just didn't justify. That there was some meaning which we secretly all knew kept us here, in Medicine.
That we were somehow, truly the ubermensch, that we pretended to each other that we were.
I sat and listened to him rant.
And sadly, having been immersed in the system myself now... for a mere nine months...
... I couldn't help but agree with him.
We're technicians, here. We're service providers.
We're disillusioned. We're tired.
We're broken.
And I cannot maintain my own illusions, when all around me my compatriots lie beaten, their idealism knocked out of them by an angry public, and a callous overseer.
I was proud of what I did, back in the UK.
We all were, we, the nurses, paramedics and doctors.
We chose our fate; we were all clinically insane to do it, we knew... but we chose.
Perhaps it had to do in part with the free education for the locals, and with the sheer expertise and professionalism the nurses took joy in.
None of them were in it out of anything other than committment and...
Here, things are so different.
And all of us are beaten, running scared of the next complaint letter cleverly designed to obtain a fee waiver... or perhaps even of the next complaint that will have to be painstakingly covered-up... "because in this country, doctors cover for each other"
A higher calling?
It's. Just. Another. Job.
