The Power of Ideals_Fighting for the Medical Mission_Yang Kangqi

The Power of Ideals

—Fighting for the Medical Mission

In my first days as a medical student, I kept seeing this slogan: "Connected with health, entrusted with life." It was on the door of my dormitory, in the orientation video, and in almost every program attributed to medical workers. It's a constant reminder of how sacred our duties are — doctors are expected to create miracles. After all, as the angels in white, we are supposed to cure everyone. However, I was uncertain if I could ever live up to that expectation. How can I make life and death decisions when I know I might fail?

I found my answer from the legendary surgeon Wu Mengchao. When he conducted surgeries that nobody else dared to perform, people asked him whether he was afraid of making mistakes and ruining his reputation. He replied, his patients are more important than his reputation. Instead of running from the fact that there could be accidents, he chose to stand by his patients.

"To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always." This is the epitaph of the American doctor Trudeau, which later became an instruction to medical workers worldwide. Our job is to treat the patients with our best effort, but sometimes, we have to recognize our limitations — time, money, technology, or just sheer luck. So our ideal is never to cure every patient; it is to comfort every patient — not operating on them, but operating for them.

In medical school we were introduced to the concept of clinical reality, which is our interaction with the patients. It's about convincing the patients to trust us, knowing when to lie, and answering the question of "why me". It's about having compassion, and giving the patients the hope to live longer and better.

During the coronavirus outbreak, the 27-year-old doctor Liu Kai took five minutes in the almost wartime routine to watch the sunset with a critically ill patient, and gave him the hope to struggle for survival. After a brutal attack from a patient, Tao Yong, the ophthalmology expert, chose to return to his job as soon as he recovered, because his patients were waiting for him to restore their sight, to share hope. My father, a surgeon in orthopaedics, once performed a surgery on femur intertrochanter, somewhere on the hip. He needed to put a nail inside to connect the fractured parts. It was supposed to be a common practice, but that day the situation became complicated. The nail couldn't be properly positioned, and the failed attempts partially shattered the bone. Though a little desperate, my father didn't lose hope, because intuitively he knew that he hadn’t tried everything yet. So he adopted an unusual alternative with a locking plate, and within ten minutes he wrapped up the surgery. Three months later, the patient could run and jump like nothing had ever happened.

At moments like those, hope defined the mission of doctors. Every day this same ideal gives us a clear vision, empowering us to work long hours in the wards, to practice handling the scalpel and tying the knots, and most importantly, to have hope, and to give hope.

In his TED talk, Paul Fedak, the expert cardiac surgeon, shared his journey to mastery. He said, mastery is about how we fight, compassion is about why we fight. And the heart of the patient is the reason for the fight.