Resident devotional #1: Why are you doing this?

Y’all, it has been a VERY LONG time since I posted on this blog. Honestly, I have not had the time to write, and that’s not just because I started residency. All of the hoopla I’ve been through is a story for another day, but for now, here is the beginning of a project that has been on my heart for about a year and half, since I was an intern — a “devotional”, or book of daily small meditations or teachings, specifically for residents and medical students. Residency is a very specific, stressful time, and because it takes up almost all of your time, almost no one has the time to process it or think about it or minister into it until they’re done and can forget about it all. As a resident, for reasons that will be explained later, I happen to have the experience AND the time to process it and write about it in a way that I hope will benefit other residents as we go about our daily grind. So here it is— the resident devotional, part 1.

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Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” — Matthew 26:35-40 NIV

Whenever someone asks you as a medical student or resident why you became a doctor, the typical answer is “to take care of patients”. This is the correct answer, the one we all should give. In reality, there are many other reasons why people seek to become doctors. 

Prestige is a big one. It’s a very honored career. Whenever you tell people you meet on the street or in church or on a date that you’re a doctor, you get the oohs and aahs and wows and I-could-never-do-that’s. When your parents (especially immigrant parents) tell other parents that their child is a doctor, they gain honor and respect from their community. 

Money, and in particular, stability of income, is another big motivator. Very few board-certified attending doctors make below $150,000 per year in the US, even in the “poorer” specialties. The “richest” specialties easily break $400,000 per year and can go up to $1 million per year in an established, business-savvy practice. And crucially, this income is stable. As a healthcare worker, you are the most essential of the essential workers. There’s always demand for more doctors, and if you lose your job, you can almost always find another one. It’s not wrong to want stable income.

But when you’ve been rounding for 4 hours and/or standing in the OR for 7 hours and you feel like your back is about to break, or when you’re spending 13-15 hours per day doing mostly busywork as a surgical intern, or when your senior berates you for the umpteenth time for doing yet another thing wrong, what gets you through those moments? Why are you dealing with all this stress? Why are you taking the hits and the pain and the insults day after day after day? 

Sure, prestige and the honor bestowed on you by your community is nice, but it’s also a pressure cooker, destined to pop whenever you do something perceived as “wrong”, even if you know it’s right. Money is good too, but to be quite frank, there are many routes to a stable, enjoyable income which take much less time and hassle. (Becoming a “healthcare extender”—nurse practitioner, PA, CRNA, and the like—is one of them, which is why residents and med students tend to dislike these professions so much.)

Why are you a doctor?

In the passage today, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, the greatest rule that people who want to follow God should always do. And he gives two answers. The first one is this: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

Note all the your’s within that verse: your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. The commandment asks you to love God with all that you are. Ultimately the command is about loving and serving God, but I point out all the yours to show that God is asking for everything that you specifically bring to the table. 

As a Christian, you believe that you were specifically made by God, that all of your attributes — the things that move or break your heart, the way you feel about things, your mind’s specific way of working and seeing the world, and your physical and figurative strengths—had something to do with how God made you specifically. (If you weren’t aware of that, now you are!) I therefore suggest a big question that you should ask yourself and know the answer to before you go to work tomorrow.

 “Is this (being a doctor) the best way that I can love and serve God?”

Big question, I know. Maybe too philosophical for the daily grind of residency. But as a Christian doctor, with all of the pain and difficulty that you’re going to suffer on this inordinately long path to a career, you must know the answer to this question. Is this career your best way of serving God? In simpler terms: are you suited to it? Do you know in your heart that you were made to do it?

If you know that the answer to this question is “yes”, it will transform your point of view. When the painful moments come, you will feel the pain, but you will have an inner peace knowing that this is what you were made to do. When you’re bored silly doing busywork as an intern, you will know that all of the grinding is moving you toward a greater purpose. And when people try to tell you that you aren’t supposed to be here, you’ll know in the deepest part of yourself that they are wrong.

You were made to do this. God made you to do this. And you will do it!