Playing God

I've heard this phrase twice so far since I've started medical school and I guess it's a little unnerving in a weird way.  Maybe unsettling is the better term.  I've heard this term from people outside of medicine, but not from anyone in the actual field, interestingly.  I've  never seen medicine as "playing God," to me it's always been a thing where we do everything we can to help a patient, to rescue and resuscitate, in purely physiological terms.


One of my favourite quotations actually is from Ambroise Paré, a French surgeon who said "I bandaged him, and God healed him."  Incredibly humble and self-effacing.  And I guess that's what 50% of medicine is like, right?  50% intervention, 50% the body accepting/rejecting that intervention and taking it from there.


So I wonder how much of a "God" role doctors really play when you think about it.  I think it's a broken phrase to begin with or one taken to extremes because it's not like doctors truly choose who dies and lives, who heals and who suffers.  


For some people, being a medical student and knowing you will have a large influence over life and death really makes some people feel like they are very superior to others. For me, it's a huge responsibility and nothing to take lightly, and definitely nothing to get a huge ego about.  We're in this field not to play God or have people marvel at our ability to heal, but to serve, to comfort, and nothing more.  It's cool if you have the attitude of an 80s fighter pilot in medicine, but I'm pretty sure things will get real at some point. 


As you finish first year and see more of what goes on beyond the textbook (I've probably a little over 6 months of clinical experience before school started), you get to see more and more the sacrifices doctors make to take care of patients.  Maybe thinking of the doctor role as one of servitude can help you with the demands placed on us training to be physicians, and help you with the stress.  To some, medicine is a calling, to some, it is a career, but remember we're all here to serve.