After living in Angola, Africa, I returned home to Kansas City, where I joined the faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. One of my duties was to the review applications from prospective students. Oh the expressiveness with which they declared motivation to study medicine: to help humanity, to serve the poor, to discover cures for cancers.But over time, these virtues get pounded out of most health professionals. Long hour, overbearing superiors, litigation threats, medical records and the suffering of our patients cause us to reconsider ever entering the health fields. Bitterness and self centeredness often replace those early sentiments of integrity. Among INMED diploma graduates, however, I note a refreshing transformation. They frequently describe how their experience serving the poorest citizens of the world reinvigorated those early virtues that attracted them to the health professions. They report how saving a baby from malaria or a woman from hemorrhage in childbirth caused them to reconnect with the excitement that originally motivated. And perhaps best of all, our graduates describe how caring for neglected people brings out with the very best personal qualities from within themselves!
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