A Reflect: The Question & Your Answer.

What do we owe this society to make us realize what we truly are??

What does it entail to give purpose to those deserving of our service?

What makes us to do more than we should!?

A month or so ago, I was given the privilege to hear a particular speech from a graduate, I know I have heard lots of speeches after my own commencement exercises and am not new to it but this speech struck a point somehow on me. Come about this valedictorian presenting his fellow classmates, proud and chin high with what they have achieved for the past 8 years. Yes, I am acknowledging this 23 or so MD’s. He was thanking everyone else for being an important part and the very reasons they have reached this feat so far, the professors with all the teaching they learned from them, the patients they have had to meet, friends reaching out so hard to make them realize they still are human beings and of course each of their family’s to which he cited a sincere apology for missing almost everything since medical school started. I s’pose you’d think I’d be crying but no, honestly I can relate to that. My 4 years of nursing may never be comparable to medical school but apologies may truly be fair to our family as they were the very foundation to which we stood, forgotten and sometimes an outlet of school stress and paper works that we all have yet to finish… They were above all the background of this ever working painting. Doing away from that, there was also one thing he was able to mention, though I can no longer memorize his exact words and to which I blame myself for being so lazy not to have this written that night. He said something on how he’d promised to do his duties and responsibility as a doctor to give his services to those who are unfortunate to gain status in the society… the poor. We all have heard that same noble stand many health care wannabes have said, “I want to be a nurse/doctor/what-so-ever health care volunteer to be of service to my country” – ish, I know this doesn’t imply that many of us never dreamt of being a doctor or a nurse and I don’t bring sarcasm and/or insult to those with this kind of principle. What I mean was how he said it.  In this lifetime, everything works with money; the world spins from price tags and cost. Everything almost even anyone has something to sell and have reason to be bought.

He quoted a story on 2 different patients coming in the emergency room;

“The doors open, a man demanding admission to the hospital for he is sick, behind him is trail of maids at a panic as they trolley him with commands of what he wants and probably almost everything he deemed he needs. The room suddenly zoomed with a bustle of orders and requests; he after all can pay for whatever he asks. Then the door swung open yet again, pale and drenched in his own sweat came lugged in a wheel chair, a man who look like he was fighting for his life even then he got sick, behind him is woman a weary look upon her face, a child by her hand and on the other damp of her husband’s feverish sweat to which she wipes on him as he shivers uncontrollably”

He stares at us, but the question he was to say was never meant for us or perhaps a part of it for our own understanding and he goes,

“Who would you serve first!?”

A question he made sure many of us health care professionals can smartly reply to, we have 4 years of schooling for that, we have been taught of morality, ethics to be observed and most of all we are our patients line for advocacy. Everyone was silent. Including his own audience… I was silent ‘coz I know the answer for his query but I speak none of it not even his colleagues who in that room were not just MD’s and what he said don’t only happen in the medical world, it’s everywhere.

The question hang on space until he rectify the rhetoric and imposed a solution of words saying more pleasing gratifications to which he owes his time. And he let on a simple reminder of which can partly answer the rhetoric,

“May we never forget the vows we took as professionals…?”

Then as I may say it, what defines us? What makes us?

If so you can answer the question!? What would it be!? Will you be able to scream with all the air you’ve got and made it known to all!??

I guess, we all know the answer.