The diligence of hand-washing:
Wash your hands after every patient. This will take time and prevent you from seeing as many patients as possible. You will see no change in your patients; it will not be intellectually stimulating. It is still necessary to prevent the spread of disease.
The diligence of Polio control:
Vaccinate every child against Polio every year. Following an outbreak, proceed to do a mop-up operation. Devote enough resources that every single child can be vaccinated despite possible other uses for resources, despite a tricky vaccine that must be refrigerated, despite a lack of education regarding the vaccine, despite indifference and sometimes hostility, despite the sheer logistics involved, despite the insidious resilience of the virus and despite the hopelessness that every new outbreak breeds. Eventually the last of the disease will be eradicated.
The diligence of the medics:
Treat only as much as is necessary for the patient to be transported to a higher level of care; keep data on all patients. You will not get to see your patients cured or experience the sense of accomplishment that goes along with healing your patients. You will lose sleep collecting data. Your efforts will improve the survival chances of all soldiers on the battlefield.
If you can intellectualize the reasons for continuing these seemingly mundane, disheartening, silly, worrisome behaviors, your diligence will make a difference. More patients, more people, will live.
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And there is the diligence of the professor reading the reflections of his students. Yours is the last in the queue. Do students mature in their thinking as a consequence of the process? How long does that take? perhaps several years? Should my enthusiasm for the endeavor wane for that reason? Or might there be some satisfaction from the act in itself?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't tell whether your piece was an expression of fatalism or a bit of dry humor, perhaps in the spirit of Steven Wright. If the former, do note that people find personal value from giving themselves up to some larger cause, in which case some attention needs to be paid to the cause in explaining the behavior. And if the latter, I could use one or two more cues that is what you were aiming for.
This wasn't actually my main reflection for the week [that post is labelled "Reflection 2"], but rather a result of me thinking a lot about diligence as I read and as class progressed.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really mean to be fatalistic; I believe that all the hard work necessary for these things is possible and is worth striving for. I would agree that putting in such diligent efforts can be a very personal goal, even if the end result depends on the participation of many more people as it does with the fight against Polio; however, one doctor washing his hands diligently can have a positive effect even if others do not follow the same behaviors.