MHM Magazine

“Sometimes to cure, often to relieve, always to comfort.” When I first saw these words, I was in my early twenties, a medical student at the University of Cape Town. They are inscribed on a plaque at Valkenberg Hospital. I chose medicine, like many of us, with the idea of ‘helping’ and the more heroic the help, (i.e. the more it was removed from what the lay person could do) the more excited I was to learn it. The first time I took blood, the first baby delivered, the first caesarean section performed, all steps on a ladder where I could do what ordinary people couldn’t. Where I could alter a patient’s course away from its natural path using expert skill and knowledge. If placing medical professions along a theoretical spectrum from comfort to relief to cure, the closer they appear to be to “cure” (such as surgery) the more status they have; the closer to comfort (such as nursing and psychotherapy) the lower the status. In spite of this I still pursued psychiatry, figuring that this frontier dealt with the source of suffering. That no matter what the body was doing, the mind was really the source of our quality of life, our meaning and learning to cure ailments of the mind would be the ultimate way to relieve suffering. However, as I had found with the rest of medicine, I was confronted with many opportunities to face suffering where I didn’t have the skills or resources to take it away. And I faced the cost to myself of the anger and frustration I felt when I couldn’t ‘fix it’ - whether because of the By Dr Tessa Roos Psychiatrist, UCT Private Academic Hospital, Cape Town, drtessa@drtessaroos.co.za www.capemindfulness.com HOW MINDFULNESS IS TEACHING ME TO BE A DOCTOR Issue 1 | 2024 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | 27 MHM