I spent 4 weeks at Tenwek Mission Hospital, Kenya with six Korean medical students in January and February this year. It was part of medical mission training elective course for students of Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea. It was such a blessings to all of us to be at Tenwek Hospital. The students submitted wonderful and thick reports. Sorry it was all written in Korean, but I would like to share just a little part of them that was written by Hyunsu Ha. My dear wife Jungmin translated. ^ ^ FYI, Dr. Matilda is a young Kenyan doctor and has been working at Tenwek Hospital since 2011. Enjoy!!! ---------------- Humility (written by Hyunsu Ha) The one thing which impressed me very much was the doctors’ humility at Tenwek hospital. Dr. Matilda was making rounds in the internal medicine ward. A patient in his 70’s called Dr. Matilda who was on her rounds and he talked about the Bible verses that he just read. While she was listening to what the patient said, her facial expression was far from being bored or impatient even though she may have been in hurry to the next patient. Instead, her face showed that she was genuinely enjoying his comment about the verses. (picture) Among many things I should learn from her, the humble heart toward the patient would be the first thing I should get. I could not see any authoritarian attitude in her. Her humble attitude was not confined to patients but also to students and residents. The humble attitude of doctors at Tenwek was not only toward to patients. They were humble to the disease itself and patients’ lives. I often watched them praying for the sick people while having a meeting and making rounds. I could feel that their prayer was genuine and sincere. If doctors in Korea pray for a patient, people would think that the doctors gave up on this patient, so they are relying on God’s help. Then, did the doctors that I met at Tenwek give up their hope on patients? Not at all! Even though modern medicine can do a lot to treat patients, there are many areas medicine cannot explain. We just try to answer it with many numbers from statistics in order to avoid saying ‘we don’t know it.’ Then what if one of our family members gets sick or I become sick and the medicine cannot help? Shall we bring the statistical numbers to answer the condition? I don’t think I will. Doctors at Tenwek will trust God in this situation. If a doctor tries to manage patients with his/her own ability, he/she should blame on himself/herself when he/she cannot heal or manage the patient. It will make the doctor to defend himself from the blame and eventually building the wall between a doctor and a patient. The doctors whom I met at Tenwek were sincerely compassionate, feeling sorry for the patients with serious diseases. They sought God’s help for the recovery of those patients. I once thought that it was ‘non-professional’ to feel sad or pain to the patients who were hurting. Now I am changing my mind; it is not wrong to feel the pain as a doctor when I see the patient in pain. Rather I should feel the same sadness as my patient has. My hard, tiring and busy life waits for me back at home. I would like to become more like Dr. Matilda who carefully listens to patients. I also want to build my character like doctors at Tenwek, praying and caring for the patients.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 05:43:18 +0000
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