doctors Following Christ

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.[1]

With this biblical exhortation in mind, final year students in Cardiff have organised a special dedication service for the past two years. This has taken place the evening before the main University of Wales College of Medicine graduation ceremony. I helped to organise the 2002 event and returned again this year.

We were inspired by the knowledge that medicine is more than simply a profession for Christians; it is a vocation. Our role model remains the Great Physician himself, Jesus Christ. Throughout the gospel accounts of his ministry, he taught that human healing is far more than just physical. It was in remembrance of this that we gathered to seek God's blessing before taking on the awesome privilege of serving his creatures: human beings who bear his own image.

The service

The 'Thanksgiving and Dedication Service' took place in the spacious and peaceful chapel of Cardiff's main teaching hospital. We invited a well-known local Christian consultant to speak and asked the hospital chaplains to give their support. Invitations were sent by email to the entire graduating class and to all the doctor members of South Wales CMF, as well as by post to about 150 doctors, lecturers and administrative staff who had contributed in various ways to our medical education.

We wanted the service to be fairly informal and accessible to those who were not regular churchgoers, while maintaining the solemnity of the occasion and the sincerity of our desire to dedicate our careers to God's service. We selected the beautiful hymns 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross' and 'Be Thou my Vision' because of their inspiring words and in the hope that non-churchgoers might remember them from Sunday school or weddings!

The 2002 order of service was as follows

1. Welcome
2. Hymn
3. Reading - Romans 12:1-18
4. Talk
5. A Doctors' Covenant
6. A Doctors' Prayer
7. Hymn
8. Reading- Isaiah 53:4,5: Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
9. Blessing

	A Doctor's Covenant With gratitude to God, faith in Christ Jesus and dependence on the Holy Spirit, I publicly profess my intent to practise medicine for the glory of God. With humility, I will seek to increase my skills. I will respect those who teach me and who broaden my knowledge. In turn, I will freely impart my knowledge and wisdom to others. With God's help, I will love those who come to me for healing and comfort. I will honour and care for each patient as a person made in the image of God, putting aside selfish interests. With God's guidance, I will endeavour to be a good steward of my skills and of society's resources. I will convey God's love in my relationships with family, friends, and community. I will aspire to reflect God's mercy in caring for the lonely, the poor, the suffering, and the dying. With God's blessing, I will respect the sanctity of human life. I will care for all my patients, rejecting those interventions that either intentionally destroy or actively end the lives of the unborn, the infirm and the terminally ill.[2]

	A Doctor's Prayer Heavenly Father, we thank you that through your Son, our Saviour, we receive new life and hope. Lead us by your Spirit in our work today. Enable us to fulfil our medical calling in love, wisdom and integrity. Give us knowledge and diligence in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Help us to bring comfort to the anxious and sorrowing. Free us from selfish ambition. Grant us sincerity in all that we say and do. Strengthen us to persevere in the face of fatigue. Keep us always mindful of your redeeming purpose and maintain our confidence that death will finally be overcome through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[3]

The chaplain led the service very smoothly and sensitively, despite receiving the order of service just 30 minutes beforehand! Romans 12:1-18 is a deeply challenging passage. Professor Tim Maughan spoke on it with eloquence and moving passion. Read it and consider how it applies to your working life - what a job description! Imagine if all of us and our colleagues worked to that high calling. I reread and meditated upon those verses in my quiet times in the first days of my house jobs - may they be my foundation every day of my career.

The Doctors' Covenant has been used in similar services in the USA. All graduands and doctors were invited to join in. Several of the graduands commented on how the Covenant was so much more inspiring and profound than the secular pledge that we recited at the graduation ceremony the following day. It encompasses other dimensions of our medical service and relationships with patients. It extends the 'respect' for patients that society expects of us, to Christlike love, honour and sacrificial service. It humbly confesses our inability to attain this calling other than with God's help and acknowledges that he gave us the intellectual abilities and opportunities necessary to become doctors. Without him, we are nothing. May we remember that wherever we are on the career ladder.

Isaiah 53:4,5 reminds us that Christ is our servant king - he gave everything for our healing.

Looking back, looking forward

About 60 people attended the service in 2002. It was very encouraging to see such a gathering - family and friends, medical students from other years, friends from church, CMF graduate members and university lecturers. Many said afterwards that they found the service beautiful and very moving. Personally, it was wonderful to be there with seven members of my family and many good friends, to share with them that special, life-defining occasion.

The 2003 final year students organised a similar service and it is a real pleasure to see this becoming an annual event. The hospital chaplains are delighted with it and I think that it is good for Christian doctors to attend, welcoming and encouraging their new colleagues. Also, having just finished my house jobs - a year subjected to the various pressures of being a doctor - it was a timely reminder for me to attend this year's Dedication Service and to reiterate the Covenant and Prayer. We daily face temptations to gossip, complain, be cynical and disrespectful of patients, to write off the elderly, infirm and alcoholic, to return to the doctors' mess as quickly as possible rather than spending time with patients needing company and a listening ear, to join in the back-biting and crude jokes amongst colleagues, to lust for more money and to spend it selfishly and foolishly. These are a far cry from the aspirations of that Covenant.

I would highly recommend you to organise a similar service next summer.

	References Col 3:23,4 Christian Physician's Oath. Passed by the CMDA House of Delegates, 1991. cmdahome.org Christian Ethics in Medical Practice. An Affirmation. London: CMF, 1997

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