“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.”
–Robert Gary Lee
One of the recurring expressions I heard throughout training, from preceptors and attendings to doctors ignoring a lowly medical student/resident eating lunch in the doctor’s lounge, was: “I’m living the dream.” It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was a code meaning anything but. In the last few weeks, I’ve discussed what steps I’m taking towards personal healing and what steps I’m taking to become the kind of doctor I want to be. Now I’d like to discuss my thoughts on what steps we as healers might need to take to heal ourselves collectively and create the kind of health care community we want to be so that we can say we are “living the dream” and really mean it.
We need to start by attending to our own health. Ever witnessed the hypocrisy of an authority figure giving you advice? How seriously did you take them? Exactly. If we don’t maintain a healthy lifestyle, keep up with preventive health care and seek medical help when indicated, then it can hardly be surprising when our patients don’t either. Our role as community leaders will be hollow — based on our credentials and nothing more. There’s another side to this though, all of us healers are also patients; we are the only ones who are able to see the health care system from both sides. We are the only ones who are able to really know whether the standard of care is realistic, what it feels like to undergo the treatments we provide and where we are falling short. Finally, it is essential that each of us be as healthy as possible in order to do more than maintain the status quo; we have a lot of work to do, and it will require all of our combined time and energy.
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