What it takes to become a good doctor

MALNUTRITION/DANN OKOTH/STANDARD
A mother feeds her malnourished child enriched peanut paste at an MSF outreach clinic near Am Timan, in eastern Chad. MSF has launched an emergency response to treat children under five who are the main victims of the current food crisis.

It takes a special kind of person to become a physician. Being a medical doctor involves a person with direct responsibility for the life and welfare of the patient.

Therefore, anyone training to practice in the field of medicine must not only be competent, capable and intelligent but must also ensure that their level of training is exceptionally thorough. There are lessons:

It does not matter where and how you started - I went to Sosio primary school then Sigalame high school. Going to Form One today is different from what it was 35 years ago. On Monday January 26, 1981, my father took me to Sigalame high school. Despite having other options, he insisted that I go to the school where I was automatically selected. Unfortunately, that is the last time I saw him alive as he passed on in a road traffic accident on February 19, 1981. I miss him to date.

Always have focus, persistence and insistence plus self-belief even in the absence of precedent or role models.

Keep your identity irrespective of the company you encounter. Meeting students from Bush (Alliance), Chocks (Loreto Limuru) and Changes (Lenana) at the University of Nairobi didn't change my values.

Maintain consistency and hard work. In the third year of medical school, young men and women undergo the arduous transition from students to practitioners. Textbooks are put away and the practical business of treating patients begins. The third-year medical rotation is the hardest. Surgery and medicine are the most rigorous of the five clerkships a third year medical student must take. Along with the other three rotations - obstetrics/gynaecology, psychiatry/neurology and peadiatrics - they make up a crucial part of clinical training which caps a student's education in medical school.

The hallmark of a doctor is the stethoscope. Many regard the instrument as a symbol of the skill and knowledge they possess. There is disappointment of pay versus expectation - the first salary, first house, first car and thinking of family.

Being an intern gives you real-life lessons in treating very sick children; confronting maternal deaths and the awful human impact of the Aids epidemic; skirting the indifference of the hospital bureaucracy; and overcoming your own fears, insecurities, and constant fatigue.

As you go higher there maybe systematic let downs and negative stereotyping, for example that doctors cannot be chief executive officers.

Some entities have a perception of you as a threat as opposed to asset.

Despite it all, being a physician is a calling and a privilege. Go for it Elvis, as you join Form One.