Some lessons from my first year in practice

It has been just over a year since I started practicing family medicine independently. They say the first year in practice is difficult and challenging. It has been that and much more this past year. However, I have learned a few lessons and reinforced a few things from my patients and colleagues in primary care clinics that I want to share with you. 

1. Healing in medicine goes both ways – We are often taught in medical school a paternalistic approach to medicine that there is the role of the healthcare provider and the role of the patient. The one who holds the knowledge of Western biomedicine and the one who is the receiver of it. This is untrue. I have had countless patients participate actively in their care because they are the experts of their lived and living experiences affecting their health. They teach me things all the time. They also help heal me in the precarious traumas that we as healthcare providers experience in bearing witness to injustices we see in the clinic and also in our societies more broadly. The patients who have expressed their support and solidarity with people who experience structural oppression in this world – thank you, you are helping to heal me. 
2. Solidarity is practiced in many ways – How we resist being subject to or conforming to systems of oppression within society and within medicine as an institution and profession can be varied, with some acts of solidarity being more visible than others. This practice of solidarity is continuously being sharpened and strengthened over time to bend our society ultimately in the direction and arc of justice and collective liberation for all. The different roles we play and how we support one another all matter, and are ways of resisting through solidarity. My clinical directors of the primary care clinics I work at who have never wavered in their support for me as a clinician throughout this past year, thank you. My colleagues in the clinic who graciously cover for me when I have been away this past year in places like Palestine, Egypt, or Jordan, thank you. 
3. Individual wellbeing is interconnected with community wellbeing – We live in societies in this world as social human beings. How we can live healthy, long, and fulfilling lives is dependent on healthy communities that provide the conditions for collective wellbeing. We see that very clearly oftentimes in the family doctor’s office or primary care setting. We all know this to be true, and thus our local, provincial, federal, and international policies and practices must ultimately reflect this reality. How we co-create our society is so incredibly important, so that we are centering care and people. Not profits, extraction, or capitalism. My patients understand this well – we need politicians at all levels to actually care and act meaningfully to foster and build community wellbeing.
4. Medicine is political – Not only is medicine inherently political, but to live a life where we actually care about humanity and act in ways that are true to our values and principles, that is and will always be political. To understand the conditions in which our patients and community experience disease, illness, and suffering – and to call attention to the root causes (the structural determinants of health), this is the work of the doctor as an advocate for health and healthcare. To be political is not a bad thing. It means you care about people and society and are willing to say and act in ways to help change it to make the conditions better for everyone. 
5. Palestine is the world’s moral compass – I worked in the Gaza Strip as a humanitarian healthcare worker and learned more about being a doctor and humanity than medical school or medical institutions could ever teach me. I have interacted with more than a handful of medical institutional administrators who perpetuate dehumanizing rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism. And to them, I say, the Palestinian healthcare workers I met and befriended are more of a reflection of honest and dedicated healthcare workers and professionals than you ever will be in my eyes. Palestine teaches us life. We are all freer in this world when structural oppression like systems of Zionism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy are dismantled. May we all continue to move and struggle towards collective liberation for all.