This week, a student asked me for a piece of wisdom about working in healthcare. I didn’t give him a lecture about pharmacology, protocols, or physiology. I told him something much simpler, just be human. It is the best thing to be in this age of artificial fakery.
In this field, we often forget that the people we care for are not just diagnoses, vitals, and medication lists. They are human beings looking to us not only for treatment, but for connection. Compassion is not a chartable item, but patients feel it instantly, and they remember it.
That same day, a patient shook my hand after my interaction with him and said something that stayed with me: “I can tell you are real. A lot of actors come in here as though they care, but they don’t.” His honesty was painful, and he wasn’t wrong. Even among ourselves, as clinicians, we know who truly cares and who merely performs the part and go home. Too many of us have allowed this work to become just a job, a series of tasks we get through until the next shift.
But this job is more than that. It is a responsibility, a privilege, and at times a calling to care for people at the very worst. Every patient we meet is someone’s sibling, parent, child, partner, or friend. They are often scared, vulnerable, or in pain, and in those moments, what they need most is a real human being standing beside them.
That’s why I told the student what I did. Skills can be taught. Procedures can be learned. Techniques et all can be learned as well. But authenticity, being present, being genuine, being human, that’s where healing truly starts.
Long after these students went back to school, I reflected on this and was surprised where that came from. But I am glad I told him that.
The best thing we can do for each other and our civilization is to be human to one another. We were not and are not born machines (smart) ones.
God bless and stay human.
Pal Ronnie
No comments:
Post a Comment