commencement is still pretty far off for most of us, but it’s going to come faster than we think. i have been following Graham’s blog for years now and think he is a wonderfully brilliant writer with a mean streak for American health care reform. i wish him success and happiness in Emergency Medicine and i hope he keeps writing. because we can all* learn from values such as these:
Number one: I will continue to use objectivity, without forgetting the subjective.
Medicine is an art grounded in science. I’ll do my best to know the studies, the data, and the pathophysiology, and try to apply them objectively.
But I won’t forget the patient. I’ll listen. I’ll be compassionate. I’ll try to keep social context, “chief concern,” and patient perspective in mind.And number two: I promise to ask questions, and on occasion dare to admit: “I don’t know.” And thank you to Stanford for encouraging this—in Gil Chu’s class, where we weren’t allowed to leave until we had collectively asked him 10 questions; with Dr. Wolfe, who teaches students to admit their own “Areas of Ignorance.” We are a generation of physicians who are unfortunately (or fortunately) still human. We are not gods. We still make mistakes, and we still don’t have all the answers. But, hopefully, we’ll know where to find them.
Number three: Don’t mess with the pancreas. Or, in the famous words of master pancreatic surgeon Dr. Norton, “I’m tellin’ you, don’t mess with the pancreas! You gotta believe me!”
And number four: I promise to be involved. Whether it’s researching, teaching, advocating, or volunteering, I will remember that health and medicine are often advanced and affected more by time spent outside a hospital than within one.
While passing clerkships and boards and memorizing facts may make us doctors today, it’s our values that will drive us to become great doctors, like the many we have met here at Stanford. Because the great physician is dedicated to the truth, but also to patient. She is a scientist, but also a healer. He tempers prognosis with hope. I think Kurt Vonnegut sums up medicine’s curiosity and compassion better than I ever could: “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
~ from Graham Walker‘s Commencement Address to the 2008 graduating class of the Stanford University School of Medicine
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*okay, maybe we all can’t learn from “don’t mess with the pancreas”…
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