Let’s talk about “WHITE COAT DAY/HIPPOCRATIC OATH” #theMedClarity. A symbolic moment representing your induction into your profession.
On that day, bright eyed and excited we have no idea what’s coming our way but we are ready to go for it. We stand together and pledge the Hippocratic oath as we begin this career (many medical schools have similar variations of the original) I highlighted a few points from the modern oath below. The original oath can be found here:
As you think of those doctors and PA’s, nurses, and the healthcare team on the frontlines of the #COVID19 pandemic here is a bit of the essence on what they stand for.... and a reminder to myself.
“I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery....
...If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.
Above all, I must not play at God...
I remember my first year of medical school we had a case discussion on how we would choose who gets what during a pandemic. I remember thinking DEAR GOD, please NO as my immediate response. Because at that point, you are putting yourself in a position to to play God and choose who dies and lives.
It literally blows my mind that people are having to figure that out in reality right now in some places if resources run out.
Hope this has offered some brief renewed clarity to my medical friends as we enter this uncertain time during healthcare and also clarity to the rest of you all of the values all physicians hope to uphold. Doctors are humans too, not robots... don’t forget that. My friends in the entrepreneur world have agreed that sometimes we put our role models on pedestals. Forgetting their struggles to make it to the top. I used to revere doctors in that same way when I was in high school and now as I start the next journey I’m realizing how much of the hard work and struggles that define us as human beings also help us persevere as a community of soon to be and current healthcare providers....even during times of crisis.