Role Models and Mentors

Twice a week I do car pool for my 9 and 10 year old kids. It is fun picking up my children and their friends from school. We talk about different things.
Once I was listening to their conversation about how one of them would love to become a professional soccer player. One of the other kids said he would love to be like Federer, the famous tennis player. Role models are important, they set an example, of effort, of success. People who really tried and were able to fulfill their goals and dreams.

We all are different, but we all need role models, people who have similar dreams and were able to suceed.

In medicine there is someone whom I really admire and who has become a role model for me. Most physicians in the Western World probably know about William Osler. But what some may not kow is that he had a very profound spiritual life. As the poster from Johns Hopkins shows, they called him "The Saint".

Once I read something writen by Dr. Bryson Delavan, a pathologist who knew Osler for forty years. He described Osler as "Generous, gracious, magnetic, responsive, he attracted himself to all who were worth knowing...At once a discerning companion and a great leader, he more than others, has exemplified to me the beauty of friendship, the glory of work, and the joy of living".

In this modern times physicians and medical students should remember Osler´s words:

"The Art of detachment, the Virtue of Method and the Quality of Throughness may make you students, in the true sense of the word, succesful practitioners, or even great investigators; but your characters may still lack that which can alone give permanence to powers- The Grace of Humility" (Teacher and Student, In Aequanimitas)

Osler was also a man of faith. "Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith-the one great moving force which can be neither weigh in the balance or test in the crucible. Intangible as the ether, ineluctable as gravitation, the radium of the moral and mental spheres, mysterious, indefinable, known only by its effects, faith pours out an unfailing stream of energy while abating nor jot nor tittle of its potency" (BMJ 1910;1:1470-2)

We need to follow good role models, like Osler, and we should realize we ourselves can become role models for those who follow us. Not only for our colleagues and medical students but for anyone who understands life is personal quest for finding real hapiness.

For those interested in knowing more about Osler, one book that introduced me to his life and that I would recommend is : "Osler: Inspirations from a Great Physician" by Charles S. Bryan.