Professionalism Defined
After your exams, after your diploma, after all the nights on call, missed dinners and diagnoses, after your apologies...
Editor’s note: This poem received a “Commendable” award for the 2014 Hippocrates Poetry Prize.
After your exams,
after your diploma,
after all the nights
on call, missed
dinners and diagnoses,
after your apologies,
after you’ve reviewed
for an insurer and after
they’ve reviewed
and messed with you,
after your futile appeal,
after your boutique practice,
after you paid rent in
The House of God,
after drug reps
mined your numbers,
after MRSA, malaria
and all the MI’s,
after you have been
sprayed with blood,
urine, spit and stool,
after thirty thousand
patients and thirty
years of practice,
you can call yourself
professional
if the distance
between doing
what you know
is best for the patient
and your selfish
heart’s desire
has narrowed
to the width
of an angel’s wing.
