The Water In The Stream

There is a tendency, particularly in American medicine, to speak about surgical training as though the pathway we know is the pathway: medical school, residency, perhaps fellowship, then practice. But becoming a surgeon can look quite different depending on where in the world you walk that path.

In Erin Brockovich epistemic justice looked like people who were manipulated being given another way to understand what happened. The woman who blamed herself for her miscarriages can reconsider that story; the mother suspected of harming her children can be vindicated; and a community told that its suffering reflected bad genes or bad choices can begin to appropriately place responsibility. 

There is something important here for clinicians. We often think of courage as something required during a dramatic medical event: a diagnosis, a surgery, a frightening procedure. But chronic illness can demand a quieter form of courage, the courage of repetition. The patient returns because treatment matters, even when returning has become physically and psychologically exhausting.