Post 13: On being a sherpa

metaphors for a physician life

Every fall, I give talk to our second year students on foundations of communication skills (essentially Posts 1-8). I start off by asking them, what is their motivation to become a doctor, and the students from this year, just like everyother year, told me it was about “people,” “care,” “help,” and “patient.”

I then share my motivation and it is to about “caring for the patient” as advised by Dr. Peabody in 1921.

“The secret of the care of the patient is caring for the patient.” 

Francis Peabody, Harvard University, 1921

A metaphor I advocate for them to consider is one of “sherpa.”

I tell them that my goal is to be a sherpa on my patient’s journey. It implies that while I have climbed “the summit” many times, it was not for my own purposes rather to help someone else achive their summit, their goal. In English it means that I have not had cancer and I can not imagine what it feels to be my patient.

In reaching the summit, the sherpa has many inputs to consider and decisions to make on a daily basis. Assesssing the weather, the condition of the path forward (and backward), strength and weakness of the traveler are all inputs in making the decision about what to do each day. Well, we do similar things, assess the condition of the patient, their path forward (and how they got here) and conclude whether and what to do.

While I am a sherpa in many ways, there is at least one very important difference. The sherpa have a well defined “Summit” on Mount Everest. For me, each person has a different summit that we can agree on (goals) and sometimes we have to adapt the goals periodcially.

Please comment below on how you see your role in life (not just patients but also those around you).

Thank you for reading,

Biren Saraiya MD