Abstract :
We can come close to the truth only if we put ourselves in
the shoes of our patients and their relatives. This is true for many
health issues and diseases. I often tell medical students, “Behave
toward your patients just as you would like other doctors to behave to your mother, father, spouse and children.” Of course, affection and integrity come first. Even if a physician manages to make his patient arise from the dead “by catching lightning in a bottle,” he is not remembered with gratitude after all, unless he acts with the necessary affection and integrity during that time.
On the other hand, your patients whom you tried hard to treat by
acting with affection and integrity feel gratitude and appreciation
towards you after all, and they even invite you to the funeral and
Mawlid ceremonies (for patients’ relatives, deaths are the charge
of physicians and survivors are the charge of God). I ask a grandchild whose grandfather and father died in my hands during over
half a century of my profession of a physician, “All of them slipped
through my hands, why do you still come for treatment?” If you act
with due integrity and affection, you can find your real place in life
and in your conscience
