March 30, a day to honor our doctors
March 30 marks Doctors’ Day — a time when physicians are recognized for caring for their communities each and every day of the year. While health care is always changing, there is one constant: physicians still shoulder the ultimate responsibility for a patient’s care whether it be in the emergency room, on the operating table or in a clinic. From the days of Hippocrates, doctors held the fate of their fellow human beings in their hands — and certainly in their hearts.
It’s why we pause on Doctors’ Day each year to thank the men and women who made the decision to travel down that long road to becoming a physician. At Northwest Health, we are grateful for the physicians who work in our hospitals, offices and clinics.
We celebrate and honor their commitment to their field, their patients and their community. Be it a primary care doctor fresh out of residency, or a veteran surgeon who continues to hone skills by adopting the latest technology, we thank you.
It is so easy to marvel at the life-saving tools medicine employs. And it’s just as easy to become frustrated with medicine when chronic disease, terminal illness and horrific accidents win the battle over the doctor’s most drastic life-saving measures.
It is too easy to forget that the physician — the healer, the comforter, the saver of lives — is a human. That same doctor who was triumphant in making a diagnosis in a perplexing case has to deliver the grim prognosis to the patient and his family.
The pediatrician who is treating a severely injured or ill child has to go home to tuck in her own little ones. The longtime family doctor who has watched a patient evolve from a vibrant and active lifestyle to an aging, weakened state may be facing the same dilemma with his own elderly parent.
On March 30 we would like to take the time to thank our doctors — newcomer and veteran, primary care and specialist — for their unwavering care throughout the year. The physicians who serve our hospital and numerous clinics all have their own stories to tell, tales of heroic measures inside our walls and in the community. We are fortunate to have these men and women work alongside us every day. Today we acknowledge their contributions, sacrifices, skills and unwavering concern for our community.