Looking back to go forward
Being told shortly before last Christmas I had only a few months left to live was a very salutary experience – even if it proved somewhat pessimistic as I am still here and able to celebrate another Christmas with friends and family. A year ago I never expected this and I'm sure that prayer has had a marked effect in slowing the progression of my illness. Strangely - in the circumstances - I have felt an overwhelming joy throughout most of this year and I want to thank all who have prayed and sent messages of encouragement.
It has made me realise even more that PRIME is not just an organisation but a worldwide family of people sharing a common desire to work with each other to create the sort of healthcare that we would desire and believe God desires. We define this in our vision statement “that everyone should have access to healthcare that provides for the whole person: body, mind and spirit, delivered with competence, compassion, respect and integrity”- the sort of healthcare we would desire for those closest to us. PRIME is a worldwide family committed to work together to bring this about.
At the annual retreat for central team members of PRIME in the UK, retreat centre chaplain Suzanne Owen, previously a nurse for 36 years, shared the words that had come to her to “turn the telescope around.” To me they brought back memories of the many hours I had spent in my small boat out at sea. Having lived more than five years in Bhutan in the Himalayas and then some time on the beautiful east coast of New Zealand, ending up in the small town of Hastings on the south coast of England seemed initially an anticlimax, even though I was certain God had brought us here. One great advantage though was the easy access to the sea - as a keen sailor and fisherman that I could relax after a busy working day in the summer with an evenings sailing out to an anchorage and then catch enough fish for our evening meal.
The trouble with finding the right place to fish was that one could set off from the shore, steer a careful compass bearing that should take you to the right spot only to find oneself a long way adrift because the tide had taken the boat sideways. The way to prevent this was to line up two points on the shore to point you in the right direction. And crucially to keep looking backwards to check they remain in line! What seems to happen with many organisations is that they set off steering a steady course towards their vision but don't notice as the tide gradually and imperceptibly takes them increasingly away from it. People do this also in their lives. So what pointers do we each have to steer us towards our lives’ fulfilment?
This international email usually considers a recent published paper and looks at the pointers we can take from it to inform ourselves as better “practitioners of whole person healthcare” or as teachers of this. However this time the paper is a torn-off page from a flipchart that I found among some old papers I was clearing out this week. It came from the first international Christian medical conference that the embryonic PRIME was invited to play a major part in - the pre-conference for medical educators at the 2004 European conference of ICMDA at Krelingen in Germany. The small group of members had already run or input to programmes for the RCGP in UK, DifD and USAID in Albania, British Council and UNICEF in Tunisia and for Christian Medical Associations in Albania and Romania – but this was our first recognition of having such a broad-reaching international role.
Participants had been asked what makes a good teacher and to think of the teacher who made most impact on them and why. They thought about this in international groups and then reported back. This page reports the feed back of one of these:
I was motivated by her enthusiasm I was able to show him my weaknesses
She was real/alive I trusted him with my heart
He will always be a source of wisdom He gave me good advice
He knew my true name He made himself redundant by preparing me
She was my spiritual mentor She opened her home and family to me
I am the inheritor of her wisdom and knowledge
I am her son/daughter which is why my love and respect remain
A quotation (sometimes attributed to Maya Angelou) goes; “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” 1
But I suspect you never quite forget what such a person said because their words become written deep within you.
At that same conference we had invited Dr John Patrick to speak to us. He introduced me to a character in a novel by US author Wendell Berry - Miss Minnie, a small town school teacher deeply loved by generations of her pupils and the community because “Miss Minnie loved books and she loved children and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other”. 2
I believe the truly good doctor or nurse “loves the science and practice of healthcare and loves their patients and introduces them one to the other.” Taking these two loves as our shore markers we can steer towards our destination. Likewise for those who teach that they “love healthcare and love those they teach and introduce them to each other”. 3 However, it is not possible to get very far unless there is wind to fill the sails of our boat. For me, that is the vision, the calling, the motivation that God can give. Otherwise we have to paddle, which is very hard work and rapidly leads to burnout!
The apostle Paul wrote: “There are three things that last, faith, hope and love – and the greatest is love.” So as we approach the end of one year, and the beginning of another, may we steer the course founded upon the love of healthcare and the love, the passion for those we care for and those we teach, and our hope to make the world a better place by our having been here. May we let the power of our God give us the strength, motivation and power for this task.
Have a very happy New Year.
John Geater
1. https://quoteinvestigator.com/20 a qu14/04/06/they-feel/
2. Wendell Berry: Watch with Me, published by Pantheon Books, New York
3. And let us remember that we are all teachers – by our example, sharing information, sharing what we have just learned. Also the good healthcare practitioner should always be a teacher of those they treat.
