The multifaceted concept of medicine was initially difficult for me to grasp as a child. I would watch shows on television about doctors trying to cure ailments and make my own visits to urgent cares, the ER, and pediatrician, but these experiences seemed to consistently remain focused on surface-level care limited to physical treatments of symptoms.

There seemed to be a repetitive algorithm that defined the practice: walk in, check in, wait your turn, explain your symptoms, get examined, get prescribed, and leave.

I liked the idea of becoming a doctor and helping others. What could be better than using textbook knowledge to end someone’s illness-induced pain?

It wasn’t until I got older that I began becoming exposed to individuals’ personal narratives of their experiences with health struggles and with medicine. Once again, a lot of this came from the media – social media posts, documentaries, and television – but my own family, as well.

These challenged my previous notions of the field and I began to understand that the practice reached far further than just helping people overcome physical ailments.

It seemed that every word a physician uttered echoed in the minds of the patients and their families who heard them. No matter how insignificant a short interaction felt to the doctor, its impact would always be evident. Dismissive, or simply uneducated physicians who weren’t able to understand the cultural, psychological, and social nuances that healthcare entails, left patients feeling alone, abandoned, or relapsing into the same sicknesses that they were being treated for.

In the last few years, I got to volunteer in healthcare facilities and in pharmaceutical/healthcare research laboratories with people who have truly committed themselves to bettering the field of healthcare and making it more inclusive and effective. I also wanted to see medicine begin to prioritize treating the root cause of illnesses rather than just symptoms. Everyone deserves the chance to be seen by a physician who can offer this to them, and while this requires significant reforms to the healthcare system as a whole, I believe that, as a physician, I can begin to do this for my patients, at the very least.