LIFE LESSONS CLINICAL MEDICINE TAUGHT ME: Just stop complaining

SULEIMAN NDORO JNR (DR AUDI)

GOD BLESS CLINICAL MEDICINE: LIFE LESSONS CLINICAL MEDICINE TAUGHT ME

LESSON 2: Just stop complaining

On 16^th August this year, I was humbled to be featured in The Standard-a Kenyan newspaper and I was glad to share my story on one lesson that I learnt from campus. Today, I am here to share with you the lesson that I shared on The Standard, and this is the second life lesson I am sharing that Clinical Medicine taught me.

Let’s get started.

When a patient is in front of you gasping for life, you don’t leave the patient there and begin complaining that you are in a dispensary, in the streets or that you are not an accident and emergency consultant. Or rather you don’t leave the pregnant woman to succumb just because oxytocin is out of stock, would you?

You will always take action. You would look for better alternatives. And even if things are out of your hands, you would refer that patient to a place where s/he would get better assistance. You wouldn’t leave that patient to die there while you’re watching, right?

It is these scenarios in practicing clinical medicine that made me get out of that box called complaining. I see it as a complete waste of time and energy.

During my stay in JKUAT, we were faced with the problem of lack of revision questions. Most of us really wished there were enough revision questions to revise for our examinations. My experiences in practicing Clinical Medicine as a student made me not to complain on this issue but to seek for solutions to it.

I started reading while setting revision questions for myself. In other instances, I asked some of my classmates to compile questions from different colleges and universities across the country. These acts made me write my own 8 medical revision books while my friends and I compiled other 6 revision books.

All these gave birth to a medical publishing company by the name MEDWAX PUBLISHERS.

Complaining is finding faults and if you are the type of person that complains about everything in life, then you are the problem.

You complain about a bad job because you know there is a more fulfilling and better job somewhere. You complain about not having a loving spouse because you know you can get the loving spouse you want somewhere else, and many more things that we you always complain about.

We only complain about things we can do something about. Otherwise we would just sit down, relax and continue with our daily activities. Otherwise, have you ever found yourself complaining that the sky is blue? Or complaining that the earth is spherical? Or complaining about gravity?

No. Because you can do nothing about it. You cannot buy paint and paint the sky yellow nor can you go to the manufacturer next to your home and tell him to make the earth triangular.

I will end this article with one quote from the author of the book Success Principles, Jack Canfield.

Jack says, “Complaining means you have a reference point for something better that you would prefer but that you are unwilling to take the risk of creating. Either accept that you are making the choice to stay where you are, take responsibility for your choice and stop complaining…or...take the risk of creating your life exactly the way you want it.”