MUSC's Commencement Address, May 20
Graduates committed to lives of service
by Bill Frist, M.D.Senate Majority Leader
If you think those gowns you’re wearing today look silly ... just wait. Soon you’ll find yourself at your kids’ sporting events wearing scrubs or lab coats. And you won’t be the only one embarrassed. As my three sons still attest, your kids will be too.
MUSC President Dr.
Ray Greenberg congratulates Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist after
receiving his honorary degree May 20. MUSC Board of Trustees Chairman
Dr. Don Johnson looks on.I’m deeply honored to join you on this momentous day in your lives. I’m also humbled. I know sometimes surgeons don’t make the best commencement speakers. That’s because we’re not talkers. We’re doers. We cut things out and fix them. But I’ve become more and more comfortable with public speaking in recent
years. As a surgeon, I was used to my patients being unconscious. Now, as a Senator, I’m used to leaving my audiences unconscious. But, in all seriousness, I’m here not for you to applaud my speech, but for me to applaud your service.
Whatever your backgrounds ... whatever your fields ... whatever direction you have chosen ... you have all committed yourselves to lives of service—to caring and compassion ... to helping and healing. You’ve made a noble choice. And you should be proud of yourselves. Just as your parents are proud of you, right parents? As I thought about what to say today, I recalled a story about a doctor I once knew — one who had a profound impact on my life. Not long before he passed away six years ago, he wrote a letter to his grandchildren.
He made some simple points: “Character is important ... Be happy in your family life ... Help your community ... Remain humble.” But what he said about practicing the healing arts moved me most: “I loved being a doctor because it meant helping people, being with patients every minute ... it is a great thing to be a doctor. Whatever work you do, do it well. Remember any job worth doing is worth doing well.” This doctor—who cared so much about the individual patient—developed the largest medical practice in middle Tennessee. He became the doctor to six consecutive governors. When there weren’t enough hospital beds in his community, he went out and raised money and built a new community hospital.
He then expanded from that single hospital to hospitals throughout the South—building in rural communities where there was little or no health care. That company grew into one of the largest and most successful health care companies in America. Each of its 300 hospitals throughout the world was grounded in the principle of helping people and serving the greater good of human ity. So who was that doctor? Thomas F. Frist. My dad. My dad taught me about the honor and dignity of the healing arts. Of the need for those who practice medicine not only to do our daily rounds ... not only to follow a code of professional ethics ... but to serve humanity. He taught me that everyone we work with plays a vital role in the care of the patient. From the orderly who cleans the bedpans to the accountant in the back office—each and every member of the team deserves respect. I know I don’t need to say this to those of you who are on your way to becoming heart surgeons. As everyone knows, us heart surgeons are a humble, gentle, not very demanding lot.
Whether you’re a surgeon or nurse, a dentist or researcher, we all need to treat each other with respect. Lives—hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives— depend on our working together as a team. Dad practiced medicine as a family doctor in Tennessee for 55 years. It was the era many doctors call the Golden Age of Medicine. That’s because dad and his colleagues could focus almost exclusively on caring for the individual patient. You and I don’t have that luxury. Not in these times.
Medicine—just the mere delivery of health care—has become far more complicated. While we have opportunities dad never could have dreamed of ... we also face challenges unfathomable to medical professionals of past generations.
On one hand, all of you begin your careers - whether as a scientist, a dentist, a doctor, a surgeon, or a counselor —at a time of great promise.
Miraculous new medicines—simple pills—extend and improve lives not just for months or years, but decades. Researchers routinely discover cures for diseases that many thought would plague humanity forever.
The biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions hold immense potential to prevent ... treat ... cure illnesses.
On the other hand, great challenges await you as well.
Health care costs continue to spiral out of control for millions of American families. Tens of millions lack insurance.
Lawsuit abuse forces doctors out of their specialties— sometimes out of the practice of medicine altogether.
And by forcing doctors to practice defensive medicine, it costs our economy tens of billions of dollars every year.
The most dangerous existential threat to the American people is biological.
Imagine a terrorist contagious with smallpox— sitting in the international lounge of an airport in New York or Paris or Beijing. Think of the sweep of death and destruction.
Infectious disease—an enemy once thought nearly defeated—has made a savage comeback.
Diarrheal disease kills millions of children each year. Approximately 1.2 billion people have no access to clean water. Malaria, long wiped out in the United States, remains a major killer around the world.
And, of course, HIV/AIDS.
When I graduated from medical school, and sat where you sit now, no one knew about HIV/AIDS.
It hadn’t killed a single person in this country.
Today—during the course of 25 years—it has killed 23 million.
A family vacation to Africa with my wife, Karyn, and our three boys, opened my eyes to the massive human suffering caused by HIV/AIDS.
That was nine years ago.
Every year since, I’ve taken time from my family and my work to go back on medical missions and fight this virus on the ground—American to African ... doctor to patient.
Only with my medical training could I have seen this greatest moral, humanitarian and public health crisis of the 21st century.
Graduates—HIV/AIDS could kill more than 60 million people in the coming years.
Think about that ... 60 million more lives lost.
There is no cure.
Whether one will be discovered is up to you. You could be the one to cure it. You could be the one to save 60 million lives. Some will say we have enough to worry about here at home. They will say now is not the time to undertake vast global endeavors—such as curing HIV/AIDS or clean water.
Well, if not now, when? If not us, who?
Just as we unleash the power of freedom around the world, so too must we unleash the power of medicine and the caring, compassion and healing that comes with it.
I’m working in theSenate to make it easier for men and women like you and me to serve humanity—to work in distant places that need our skills the most.
Medicine is a healing art. It can also be a currency for peace.
I urge each of you to consider how you can give back ... how you can help to heal around the world.
Let me share with you a moving experience that illustrates our potential as medical professionals.
A couple months ago, I was visiting a children’s hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
A doctor pulled me aside and told me about a special patient they were treating that morning ... a 6-year-old girl from Iraq. Her name was
Shayan.
Shayan needed life-saving heart surgery—tetralogy of fallot. A charity brought the little girl and her mother to the United States so doctors could perform it.
After the procedure, the mother pulled me aside and—through an interpreter—said:
Please tell the American people thank you for their compassion and generosity in bringing Shayan to the United States for this operation. Thank you for saving my daughter’s life.
I will never forget the look in that mother’s face ... or the look I have seen in the faces of patients I have worked with in places like Sudan and Uganda ... ravaged by poverty and war.
It’s the same look I’ve seen on my transplant patients who had been told they had no hope to live— but awoke from their operation with a new, beating, healthy heart.
My point is this: you have earned the rare privilege not only to treat people ... but to touch lives ... profoundly ... in ways that no one else can ... with hope. Doctors—you offer hope. Nurses—you offer hope. Scientists—you offer hope. Pharmacists—you offer hope. Dentists—you offer hope.
Together ... we can build a world of hope. It is often said ...It is the privilege of adults to give advice, and it is the privilege of youth not to listen.
Nonetheless ... my advice to you is this—seize the opportunities before you. You have the opportunity—with your education, your training, and your commitment—to do so much good in the world.
The opportunity to alleviate suffering ... perhaps as a volunteer in Appalachia or as a medical missionary in Africa.
The opportunity to relieve the burden of disease ... perhaps as a dentist or nurse in a hospital or a research scientist at a university.
The opportunity to provide a more fulfilling life and a more promising
future for millions the world over ... perhaps as a United States senator—if you’re crazy enough to run.
All this—and so much more—you can do with your education.
The world today is far different from the world I entered when I completed medical school 30 years ago.
And it’s vastly different from the world my dad entered when he completed medical school 70 years ago.
But some things always stay the same.
"Think big,” my dad once said.
"We learn to crawl before we can walk and walk before we can run. We
seek the highest level. If you do that, you can achieve anything, there is no limit to what you can do.”
So be proud of what you’ve accomplished up until today...and confident about what you’ll accomplish over the course of your careers and your lives.
After all, this is just the commencement. Congratulations to you all.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Catalyst Online is published weekly,
updated
as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public
Relations
for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of
South
Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at
792-4107
or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to
Catalyst
Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to
petersnd@musc.edu
or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call
Community
Press at 849-1778.