ovdje - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

CHOICE OF PHYSICIAN’S VOCATION
FROM THE BIOETHICAL POINT OF VIEW
“Long live the king! Let all those who breathe in the ardent red light
rejoice, but down here it is horrible! Let man not tempt gods and never
wish to see what they gracefully cover with darkness and shudder!” (F.
Schiller, The Diver)
To be acquainted with diseases, symptoms, their appearance and beginnings,
to know how to remove pain, help the patients, to play a useful
role within human community, are quite sufficient motives, which apparently
do not need any excuse or explanation. These motives, however, did
not exist in the mind of every future physician. When he or she was a child,
they wished and wanted much more to become a fireman, a pilot, or a
fashion model. Between the future fireman and the real student of medicine
had to pass a long period of huge transformation of inclination towards a
certain vocation. The decision to become a physician imposed itself one
day, even if it could look like someone else suggested it, or that the obvious
rational arguments caused this decision.
Every activity of adults, even the medical one, always contains some
connection with subconscious wishes, whether it follows the wish or, in
contrary, opposes it. Every professional activity corresponds to something
in the subconscious of whoever is doing it. Concerning this, differences
between various professions are small. Only the ways and forms of expressions
are different. What is looming and what is satisfied, in fact, behind
certain rational motives for choosing medical profession. Performing medical
vocation demands a huge amount of scientific knowledge, and knowing
contains an internal satisfaction that everyone must feel. We could say
that the joy of knowing is the anticipation of pleasure that the physician
will feel while treating his patients. This is also a very questionable argument,
because the pleasure is the same if the physician is a researcher who
will never treat a patient in practice. That feeling is much more intensive
than simple intellectual pleasure. It has a character of joy, a personal joy
which surpasses, without strictly excluding, altruistic pleasure that is felt
in helping other people.
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