People who pursue medicine believe that life in general is worth something. Often, life needs maintenance and people should receive help irrespective of the other details of their circumstances. A sick person’s pain takes precedence over my fatigue, someone else’s fever is more important than my sense of overwhelm, because at this moment I have the training to deal with those things, and the moment after this one, I get to leave the hospital and be with my family and not everyone has that privilege. If medicine is reduced to just a job, then it just becomes math. My fatigue is in the debit column, and someone else’s nausea is in the credits, and when they don’t balance then the question becomes, is this job worth it? And if it’s just a job, then the answer’s an unequivocal no. In the moment, it’s too demanding and thankless and the level of investment is too high.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 18:52:24 +0000