By Goh Lee Gan
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Many of us come to this realization over time.
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis*
This drawing is captioned Life is a journey, not a destination.
Two ideas are drawn here.
On the right side, in the foreground, is a framed photograph of a graduate posing with his proud parents. The young graduate doctor has reached his destination.
On the left, in the background, the young doctors are examining a patient. They have left their initial destination behind and have now embarked on their life-long journey.
Commentary
There is a parallel between the driving license and the doctor’s license to practice. In order to drive safely, we learn to do it right and then do it rightly. The skills learnt are used long after we pass the driving test and obtain our license. In time, with exposure to driving conditions that exercise those skills, we become better drivers. So, although getting a driver’s license is an objective, what is more important is that it marks the beginning of a journey through life as a safe driver.
Medical practice is an exact parallel to driving a car. Our license to practice is the official endorsement that we have shown the capacity to practice safely. In a nutshell, we have learnt how to take a history of the patient’s symptoms, examine for physical signs to support our differential diagnoses, and investigate where necessary, in order to arrive at an appropriate conclusion. This gives us the basis to institute a certain course of treatment for the patient.
The patients that we see, and these processes that we navigate, together create our professional journey as medical practitioners. The repeated cycles of doing, learning, relearning, and improving make us better doctors. The degrees hanging on the wall are just testimony to the steps to proficiency. Indeed, doctoring is a journey and not a destination.
———- A/Prof Goh Lee Gan
*Latin phrase meaning, “Art is long, life is short”.
Goh Lee Gan is a past president of the College, the Singapore Medical Association, as well as the Asia Pacific chapter of the World Association of Family Doctors. He started the academic Family Medicine program in NUS in 1987 and also the Master of Medicine training programs. He considers himself the midwife of Family Medicine in Singapore although many of us think of him as the father!
The commentary and vignette were reproduced with permission from the book “Being Human, Stories from Family Medicine” edited by Cheong Pak Yean and Ong Chooi Peng and published in 2021 by the College of Family Physicians Singapore.
Pictures of illness experiences were drawn by NUS medical students in workshops conducted from 2012-2017 by A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean. Senior family physicians subsequently shared vignettes and commentaries based on the pictures.
