Mar 2004
No. 10
Remember the Oath
by Sabrina Akhtar
MS1; University of Western Ontario, Canada
"I do solemnly swear, by whatever I hold most sacred:
That I will be loyal to the Profession of Medicine and just and generous to its members;…"Mothers are rarely wrong about anything. But mine once told me that time goes by slowly when you're young and faster when you grow up. At twenty, I don't think anybody considers me actually grown up and yet time is still running by in a furious sprint, leaving me to only blink in sheer amazement as to where on earth it is going in such a hurry. The strangers in my class who stood, nervously dressed in stiff white coats, and solemnly took the Hippocratic Oath with me were just a foreign list of names on the ceremony program six months ago. Practically overnight we have become an unusually large but wonderfully tight-knit family that plays, eats, cries, sleeps, and dissects cadavers together, all of us leaning on one another to get through the grueling days of training in medical school and laughing together when we find a spare moment to stop and catch our breaths.
"That I will lead my life and practice my profession in uprightness and honour;
That into whatsoever house I shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of my power, holding myself far along from wrong, from corruption, from the tempting of others to vice;…"There are times when I wonder what I'm doing here. Other kids my age would be incredulous to know that I spend my free time during the school week eagerly observing autopsies, surgeries or clinics. Only another medical student can comprehend the intertwined feelings of absolute amazement and cold fear that make my heart beat faster when I think about the career upon which I will embark in a few short years. How am I ever going to know what treatment to prescribe for any given ailment that our artful human bodies can invent; how to break the bad news of cancer, death, coma or any of the other somber elements of patient care; what needles to inject; what incision to make; and how to expect the unexpected, foresee the unforeseeable and do the impossible - how will I ever learn to be a good doctor? My eyesight gets worse and my fingers more calloused after every quarter of exams from reading and writing for hours upon end as I try to absorb the seemingly infinite volumes of knowledge I must master to one day perform as a confident physician. The pass-or-fail school system does little to appease my mind; I want to know everything and I want to know it to perfection. I need to.
"That I will exercise my profession solely for the cure of my patients and will give no drug, perform no operation, even if solicited, far less suggest it;
That whatsoever I shall see or hear of the lives of others which is not fitting to be spoken, I will keep inviolably secret...."You have to be a little bit crazy to be a doctor. Either that or as strong as a rock. How else can someone manage to spend their days being compassionate caregivers to their patients in need, and then go straight home at night and do the same for their own loved ones? It can't be easy. There are all those frightening urban legends about the terribly difficult personal lives of physicians - the ones about higher-than-average divorce, suicide and substance abuse rates. Oh, and when I said urban legends, I meant supported studies published in respected medical journals. Maybe medicine would have been a saner choice if I liked being alone. Instead, like generations of others in my future profession have done before me, somewhere along the way I will have to discover the fine balance between a time-consuming, emotionally, physically and mentally draining career, and the life I want to live one day as a loving mother, wife, daughter, sister and woman. What will happen when I take maternity leave, creating an extra workload in the clinic for my already burnt-out colleagues? How will I feel if I am paged to surgery on the night of my child's school play/dance recital/high-school graduation? Am I destined to become embittered by this profession?
"These things I do swear.
And, should I be true to this, my oath, may prosperity and good repute be ever mine; opposite, should I prove myself forsworn."And then I stop. And I think:
That the moment I close my eyes listening on my stethoscope and clearly recognize a murmur, I feel like I've just heard a secret music;
That when painstakingly trying to palpate for a liver I just can't find, the smile of the patient from his hospital bed is all it takes to convince me that I am learning something well worth the while;
That in an operating room watching a bustling surgical team surrounding a bloody incision, retractors shining, and scalpels and needles flying, I am filled with the fascination of a child watching a magician and wanting so badly to be taught how the trick is done;
That listening to the story of a patient's suffering makes the blood accelerate through my veins and my mind race with a determination to solve the problem so powerful that it takes me by surprise;
That the Hippocratic Oath stirs within me a fierce pride that no other words can.When I stop and think, I understand the simple reason why time is hastening me along this path to medicine.
Passion.