Within my residency program is built a unique dual-site program experience: the first site is our downtown clinic at the main hospital serving an urban underserved population while the second is a rural clinic site. At this second site in rural Pennsylvania, we residents must learn how to care for the rural poor often times in the same day we work back in the afternoons at the downtown clinic. Very challenging!
Apparently the unique challenge at the rural site is the way patients abuse narcotics. Because the selling and abuse of narcotics is so high in this area, patients must sign a contract agreeing that they will only accept prescription drugs from one clinic site; must have urine tests during scheduled office visits; and promise to not sell any narcotics. A 3rd year resident and fellow brother in the Lord tells me of how frequent his patients break this trust agreement as they go from physician to physician abusing the use of narcotics. My friend had a of pain in his voice as he seems to takes this abuse of trust personally.
“But the way that I think if it”, he says, “Is that this it a way to enter in to the way that God loves us. In the same way that we fail God and abuse our trust with him, so our patients abuse our trust and yet we cannot give up on them. God is redeeming us through his patience and never turns us away; so we must help to bring redemption to our patients lives and never give up on them.”
The way we view God greatly affects our care for patients.
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