Medical Culture Shock

Medical Culture Shock—that’s what I think best describes how I’ve been feeling. It’s funny—I thought I might go through culture shock coming back to the US. But this time it has been focused in the medical world. Since coming to Bandon, I have seen patients be shuffled through one lab test after another, get CT scans, X-rays, and be hooked up to all sorts of technical equipment. Here in the US, we have the ability to look inside someone without opening them up—it’s such a weird thing to look at the person in front of you who is, for example, in respiratory distress, and hold an x-ray of their chest that gives you the key to why they are in such trouble. In Papua, only the big cities had such technology or capabilities for labs. All we had in the remote areas was what we could see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and hear without ears. There were no “routine” lab tests to see how high their cholesterol was, check their blood glucose levels, or count WBCs. Not even a urinalysis. It just makes me think about how much we rely on technology to help us as doctors—and to think about how much is actually necessary? Of course, here we worry about litigation, insurance companies, and peace of mind. There—people have no money, no transportation, but also no ability or knowledge of litigation. Interesting for sure. Then there’s medications—in the US we have a whole host of meds to choose from, but we only had such a limited supply in the field. Charting here has to be immaculate, and there we didn’t do charts at all. Privacy, follow-up, referrals, acute care, preventative care, and even the kinds of diseases were very different. In Papua, it’s likely that few people live long enough to get cancer, and here every woman over 40 should get a mammogram, even immunizations. The disparity is enormous. And yet, we rely so much on medicine to cure us, whereas they must rely on God a whole lot more.

There’s another aspect of medical culture shock I’ve been experiencing and that has to do with Jesus. This whole year I’ve been shadowing a Christian doctor, and I just came off a kind of “spiritual high” by performing medical care in Jesus’ Name and having opportunity to pray with nearly every patient. I don’t deny that the doctors here in Bandon have good hearts—in fact, every patient and nurse tells me how lucky I am to work with this doctor. But there’s something, something BIG missing. I see it especially when we deal with patients who are facing really big health issues—cancer, macular degeneration, depression. These patients need Jesus. I wanted to offer to pray with them, but I couldn’t, so I just prayed silently. The doc I am working with has prayers up on her walls in her office, and I know she cares deeply about them, but a few staff people have already told me to pray for her. She says she’s somewhere between fundamental Christian and atheist, and I’m not sure what that means. I just don’t know how people do such a stressful job like medicine without Jesus as their source. No wonder doctors have such high burnout rate, high divorce, high substance abuse. If Jesus wasn’t with me, I don’t know how I could do this day in and out. I would run out quickly of compassion and patience. I know there’ll be days when I’m short on all those things, but I hope that I won’t ever be angry because someone was truly needing help.