6: Humbleness & Patience

What I learned these past days at clinicals is that humbleness and patience are two traits that are needed in order to survive the day surrounded by sickness and pain. There are times were it feels like it’s human nature to pull chunks of hair out. It’s usually not because of frustration, because frustration will just make us grumble, or if you’re like me, you’ll hold all the frustration in until a small little detail will cause you to explode. However, we usually become frustrated because we run out of patience. Just a thought, even though you may be running around, moving from one task to the next, and dripping sweat during these tasks (which seem to be my mornings), patience will actually be needed more during these kind of rounds—patience isn’t necessary about time. Where patience is needed, humbleness is required as well. It’s not all about what we do or what we bring to the place. It’s all about the patient. Sometimes stepping down resolves more problems than it would be to take matters into our own hands. Many patients I encounter feel embarrassed, confused, and inferior in their little bedroom. They went from having so much of what we have in our lives, to feeling completely dependent on a stranger. It’s our responsibility to realize that there’s more to patients life then the life we know in our workplace. Where we chose to work will become part of our life, but most of these patients don’t willing chose to be in the situation that they are in. We could learn so much about our patients and how to provide healing, just by expressing the traits of humbleness and patience.