Actors
This morning I was in the operating room. Surgery attracts a certain kind of person, the kind that likes to work with their hands. The type that likes to see the immediate impact of their work. Start a patient on a drug and it may take weeks or longer to work - if it all. Take out an appendix or fix together a bone, the impact is immediate.
As a medical student, what you can do - for good reason - is limited. But often we get to close, meaning while the surgery is winding down, I can stitch the incisions close. It is a small part, a short denoument, in the final act of the whole production. And yet, I must admit once I’ve finished, there is a sense of pride in laying the dressing over the wound and having the satisfication of making a small impact in this individual patient’s life.
Later that day, after scrubbing out, I listened to the White Coat/Black Art episode that followed teams from Hacking Health. When I heard the young women review the “Infant Passport”, I could not help feeling that same sense of pride as I did tying those sutures. I haven’t met this woman, I haven’t been directly been involved at all in this project, and yet the sense of satisfaction was even greater than what I had done with my own two hands.
At times I have been frustrated with the pace of our work at Hacking Health. But in hearing the impact that this one project - of the many we have helped come together - I could not help a swelling of inspiration by the difference we make by setting the stage for passionate innovators to act. I wonder how else could have these social workers achieved the impact they will have on these young vulnerable women were it not for this plot we have set in motion?
I gather that many of us are drawn to healthcare because of a desire to play a part, however small that may be, in helping the lives of others. There is that niggling discomfort in being just a member of the audience. At Hacking Health, by bringing the different actors together in a meaningful scenes like this, we can achieve so much more than what we could in a one-man show.
I cannot wait to see how many plots we can inspire, and how their stories unfold.
@jeeshanc