schoolscolleges2020 hed news

 
FR ERNESTO O JAVIER SJ
DR JOSE P RIZAL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE FOUNDING PRESIDENT
SPEAKER, 31ST JPRSM COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES 
Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan 
26 May 2017

Thank you, Father-President Bobby Yap SJ, for inviting me to this graduation. With characteristic tact and diplomacy, he gently but clearly hinted that I should not speak longer than 15 to 20 minutes! 

I have no problem with that since I subscribe to what educational psychologists say about students’ (including medical students!) span of attention. Ask Dr Jun Panopio! 

First of all, congratulations to you, dear graduates. Medical training is a demanding course. You have put in many hours of study and hard, demanding work. Congratulations as well to the medical faculty. You, too, have put in many hours of study and teaching to prepare these graduates for their profession and vocation as healers. And certainly, you, dear parents, richly deserve congratulations. Without you, this day would not have been possible. 

Let me begin with a quote from Shakespeare that is familiar to many of you. Romeo, who had fallen madly in love with Juliet, when told that she was a Capulet, asks the question: “What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose. A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.” 

Applying that to medical schools: can we say that a medical school is a school is a school? A medical school by any other name would be just as good? I think Shakespeare was only partly right. There is a sense in which medical schools can be considered the same. Indeed, all medical schools do the same thing: research, teaching, and learning all those subjects that are essential to the formation and training of physicians. 

But over and above the common yardstick by which we measure medical professional proficiency, there are medical schools, like Xavier University, which rightly claim that their graduates are, in important respects, different from those of similar institutions; that their graduates carry a distinctive “brand” (if you wish to call it that) that distinguishes their graduates from those of other medical schools. 

Of course, I like to believe that all medical schools have this common denominator: they all turn out graduates equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills that they must have to meet the medical needs and expectations of their patients and their families. But I also believe that not all medical schools are the same. I believe that medical schools are not created equal and that they differ in important and perhaps crucial ways. 

It is in this context that we must ask: How and in what significant ways do the graduates of Xavier University’s Dr Jose P Rizal School of Medicine differ from those of other schools? How and in what ways can we tell that they have been trained in this institution? 

I suggest that three “C’s” should characterize you as graduates of this medical school: (1) competence, (2) compassion, and (3) Christ-likeness. 

Competence. I cannot claim professional knowledge of how medical competence is to be defined. You – the faculty and graduates – are the experts on this subject. But this I wanted to say. Competence is indeed required of all professions.

But over and above that, competence is crucial for you. Other professionals can correct their mistakes. A medical doctor’s serious mistake is almost always fatal. 

I may not be able to professionally define medical competence but I have had considerable personal experience as a patient of what competence is: three cancer surgeries, one gall-bladder operation, and only last October 7 – “transforaminal lumber interbody fusion” to remedy my lumbar spinal stenosis. And between these operating room visits, I have had periodic treatment for pneumonia and other less exotic ailments the elderly like me are often heir to. At age 86, I am a standing and living testimony to medical competence for which I am extremely grateful. 

Compassion. Compassion is a powerful word that sums up the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life. It is derived from two Greek words meaning “to suffer with.” It means you, the doctor, share my agony, my fear, my pain. It doesn’t mean that your compassion should immobilize your hand as you wield the scalpel in an operating room. 

Compassion simply means that we the patient and loved ones, see and sense in you, not just someone with the knowledge, skills, and experience to heal and cure, but someone who truly cares.

To the compassionate physician, the patient is more than just a medical chart or a computer printout. As someone said so well: “Compassion means that you feel my fears as you feel my pulse, that you resonate to the terrible loneliness of each hospital bed. Compassion means that you, the doctor, realize how the hospital gown almost erases my individuality and even my human dignity.”

Compassion, in any situation almost always exacts a heavy price both from the giver and the receiver. This is particularly true of you, doctors. Your work hours are often exhausting enough. It is very tempting not to become emotionally involved in the pains and fears and problems of your patients and their families. 

I realize that it is possible for you to be compassionate inside you, without your being able to show it. That may lessen your exhaustion but it leaves your patient terribly alone, no matter how close you stand to his/her hospital bed. No, your compassion must be visible, palpable to me, your patient, and my family, whose fear is often as strong as mine. 

Christ-likeness. Last July 27, 2012 when you invited me to your Silver Jubilee as a medical school, this is part of what I said: “I offer the word 'Christ-like' as a reminder to ourselves (this Jubilee year) that the word 'Christ-like' has always been and, I hope, will continue to be part of your vision and identity, as a medical school…”

From the very beginning, our vision for this medical school has always been to form and train doctors after the heart of the Divine Physician. 

As you page through the Gospels and observe how Christ dealt with those who came to Him for healing, you will notice that He did not focus only on the illness or the disease. The blind man, the lepers, the paralytic, the deaf and dumb, the possessed of evil spirits – all of them Jesus approached not as medical cases but as human beings – living, trembling, fearful, despairing human beings. 

I think this needs to be emphasized again these days because, in spite of the awesome advances of modern technology that have immensely benefited medical and healthcare, there is a real danger that the total person can be lost sight of. 

That would indeed be tragic because when all is said and done, the diseased heart is only part of the total person. You do not encounter on the hospital corridors a walking liver, kidney, prostate or pancreas, or whatever it is you are called upon to treat. These vital organs are parts of a much more important and precious totality: a human being, made in the image and likeness of the same God who created you. 

RELATED READ: Profile of Fr Ernesto Javier SJ - Dr Jose P Rizal School of Medicine 2017 Commencement Speaker

As graduates of the Xavier University - Dr Jose P Rizal School of Medicine, you are privileged to touch not just a medical case but a child of God at a particularly crucial moment in his/her existence, often terrifyingly feeling all alone on the examination table or in the operating room. I know how this feels. I have been there several times. 

You, doctors and members of the healing profession, are uncommonly blessed. Your patients and their loved ones go to you with their hopes and fears and endow you with almost superhuman powers to heal and alleviate pain. No other profession, including religious ministry, can claim the trust, confidence, and faith that people bestow on you. 

As we celebrate this 34th year of our medical school, as we graduate another batch of competent, compassionate, and Christ-like healers, allow me to congratulate you and thank you in the name of those whom you have touched and will touch in healing. I reiterate my thanks to those who have made this medical school a reality. With meager resources but armed with a strong faith that this is God’s work and that Xavier University would not be complete if it did not form doctors, nurses, and healers to minister to Christ in His sick, especially those who have little or no access to basic medical care. 

In closing, let me gift you, the new graduates and the medical faculty and administration, with a prayer blessing for physicians. I don’t know who composed it but it beautifully expresses what I have tried to say to you this morning:  

BLESSING FOR PHYSICIANS

May you always heal and be healed.
May those who come to you find in you one who cares deeply,
Whose knowledge includes knowledge of the Spirit’s movements.
May you take pride in your gifts and use them humbly.
May the suffering and vulnerable be your teachers.
May you see in others the goodness of a Tender God.
May compassion encircle you, carry you, strengthen you and give you insight.
May your presence be hope to those in pain.
May your skill ease the way and instill trust.
May you know the Healer of all.
May your heart be held
In the compassion and tenderness of God. 

AMEN.