As I leave for Libreville today to pick up my husband (finally!) and go traveling, I have been thinking about the traces that we leave behind. I went to talk with the directrice of care at the hospital to prepare for my departure and she asked me to sign in a book of students that have passed through Schweitzer over the past years. In the comments section, everyone always writes super cheery things “thank you for the best experience I can imagine,” or “the spirit of Schweitzer is embodied by everyone works at this hospital,” things that I consider might be true only the best of conditions here. Everyone likes to remember experiences and themselves as better than they really were. But when I look back honestly at my time at Schweitzer, I view it as a microcosm for my professional career as a whole: I hope that a few people were very positively impacted by my care and that the rest were well cared for to neutral. As if you gave all of my patients and contacts here a “sophie satisfaction scale of 1-10” and everyone rated me 5 and above. Maybe my motto can be: touch a few, and leave the rest neutral. Not wildly inspiring, but realistic?
Leaving emotional traces behind, let us think about the physical aspects of myself that I want to leave and will leave. Already I have worked on the guide to Pediatrie that another doctor started and I will continue to add to that. I will be sure to distribute that to future stagieres and to the American Schweitzer Foundation. I aim to make a little handout on diarrhea. I gave a kick bootie presentation on Pediatric asthma management, replete with posters. And I will create a mini one-page guide to Maternite for future students here as well. Will anything of these things last? How do any of us leave enduring traces of ourselves? If even, I would contend, the spirit of Schweitzer corrodes, what can a mere mortal leave?
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