I recently attended the screening of a German documentary film titled Grenzland, which translates to Borderland. In it the filmmaker Andreas Voigt presents a series of miniature portraits of ordinary people on both sides of the river Oder which forms part of the border between Poland and Germany.
Our work in Medicine is not a sprint. It is more like a marathon. We know it requires discipline, commitment, intention, hard work, and stamina. But unlike running a marathon for individual reasons, it is a community activity.
Our training for a career in medicine feels, at times, like this- just waiting to go on. It is lengthy, tedious, physically, emotionally, and cognitively demanding, and we often ask ourselves questions about our readiness and our competencies, while along the way doubting our places of belonging in this profession.
We can reasonably ask the question, why then would civilization develop altruistic societal institutions and hence individual responses that has its members move toward danger, provide care for others who may risk the caregivers themselves, and even elevate those responses and individuals in some way as responding to a higher calling?
Just over 100 years ago in the aftermath of the first world war and the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, Yeats wrote these words as his pregnant wife lay close to death, suffering from the same virus that killed an estimated 20-50 million people. An almost equal number of deaths resulted from the war itself. It is unimaginable, the scale, depth and impact of those events at that time.
