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GENERATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES

shocked to discover a darkening cloud of negativity and must sense and be truly sympathetic to the social, economic, and
pessimism insidiously permeating from the waiting psychological impact that disease has upon our patients and their
room down the clinic hallway and hovering over the families. We must find ways to communicate our feelings effectively.
exam room, operating room, and hospital bed. As a We must restore hope where possible; we must console when our
medical student, the complaints of those working treatment fails.” (1)
around me — attendings, residents, nursing staff, and
fellow students — took me aback at first. I had devoted I recently text messaged my grandfather and asked him for “tips”
the first 21 years of my life diligently pursuing a life in for being a good physician, he immediately texted back: “Tips: Lis-
medicine. We all know what it entails to attain that cov- ten to your patient with genuine interest. Remember Dr. Thomas
eted spot in medical school. I was jubilant, optimistic, Brown’s advice and the admonition of Sir William Osler. -JLS”
and ready to roll up my sleeves and take on the world.
Why was everyone upset? How did things get this way? While our perspectives are unique and our medical school grad-
Is it going to change? Is being a doctor still what I uations are separated by 62 years, my grandfather, mother, sister,
dreamed it would be? and I now communicate on a higher level through the shared lan-
guage of medicine and are bound together by an unbreakable spirit
Growing up I knew that becoming a physician would woven of scared knowledge, passed from one generation to the next,
be difficult. I saw my mother and sister make countless acquired through a rite of passage endured by rare few, and appre-
sacrifices in order to wear their white coats. Teachers, friends, and even ciated by fewer. In this tradition, I will heed Grampa Jim’s tips, gen-
some family members tried to persuade me to pursue other career erational wisdom, and I will proudly and confidently listen to my
paths, admonishing me there were more “efficient” ways to make a patients with genuine interest, resist the unbridled technical Utopia,
living. But in my opinion, there was no better reason to sacrifice than and fight to preserve the patient-physician relationship through car-
for the sick. Doctors get to use their God-given gifts to help heal the ing, compassion, understanding, and communication. I will restore
bodies and restore the spirits of our patients. Being a good doctor re- hope and console others even when I fail. I pray I am able to do this
quires intelligence, determination, and a love of science, but being an for my children, theirs, and many generations to come. If I don’t,
excellent doctor requires true love and compassion for humanity and who will?
a steadfast dedication to serving the sick. We must remember that
being a doctor is a noble profession, even when the world may paint References:
us in a negative light. In so many ways, technology has saved patient’s 1) Story, J. (1990). Misericordia Medici. Neurosurgery, 27(6),
lives, but it can also serve as a blockade in the doctor-patient relation-
ship. We must look up from our screens and into the eyes of our pa- 946-953.
tients. We must take our fingers off the keys and place our hands on
the patients. Heidi Held McDonald is a fourth year medical student at UT Health
San Antonio.
We can choose to succumb to the negative attitudes circulating
and metastasizing throughout the body of medicine, emanating
from both doctors and patients, complaining and waning in perpet-
ual, pathologic rhythm, or we can answer the call to stand up for
our profession and remember the Hippocratic Oath. If we don’t be-
lieve that there is hope and joy in what we do, then how can we ex-
pect our patients or the world to see it? I want to share a few
prophetic words from a speech my wise physician grandfather gave
in 1990 (the year I was born) that ring piercingly true today:

“In these times, when an unbridled technical Utopia threatens to
eliminate totally the personal doctor-patient relationship, caring and
compassion must constantly be a foremost quality in our practice—
we must see and feel each individual patient’s disease as if we suffered
from it ourselves. We must not only understand the symptoms of
organ dysfunction and the pain that the disorder calls forth, but we

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