After living on this earth for 66 years, there are some truths I have learned about life.Many are painful, many are joyful.The joyful are easily remembered, the painful require more thought because we like to banish them from memory for they often make us uncomfortable. However, these, as you know are often the most instructive. The other thing about getting older is you get to say what you want without worrying about what other people will think.You even get to wear purple when you want.Even though it was my wife’s idea, I kind of like it now.
There are times in a very large project when you are faced with a choice of going the extra mile on some task, one that no one will ever know about, much less reward you for, or you could choose to be indifferent to the success of the project and do what gets you by and causes no attention. All of you have worked very hard on the project to this point.Many of you have worked after hours, evening and weekends to meet deadlines.Some of you wonder if anyone noticed.We noticed. And we are grateful.But it is easy at this point to reduce you effort and cruise to the finish line letting others carry you along.This is a special project, and a special place. Not one that comes along very often. You have a chance to not only change the way medicine is practiced here in St. Augustine, but to change the way many other hospitals will provide medical care in the future. This is not the time to become complacent.Seymour Cray, the creator of one of our country’s first super computers, once said the difference between a great computer and an average one, is not just great design, it is the attention given to the details.
Here is one of the important lessons I’ve learned in my life. Indifference is at the heart of most problems. What is indifference? The word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blurbetween light and darkness, good and evil, success and failure. What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference that is even conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally even as the world around us is turned upside-down?
Of course, indifference can be tempting-- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from a problem. It is so much easier to avoid rude interruptions to our work, our plans and our schedules. It is, after all, awkward and troublesome, to be involved in someone else’s problem. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her co-workers or the patient in a hospital bed are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Our indifference reduces the “other person” to an abstraction.
Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony or great software. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses, angry that important patient information is ignored because of time constraints. But indifference is never creative.
Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of your enemy, for it benefits your opponent (disease) -- never your patient, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The ignored patient in their hospital bed, -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of my 66 years.
So as we turn our attention to testing and training, it is my hope that you will indeed “finish strong”.And that you will not remain indifferent to the patient in our hospital bed, their family in the waiting room, but put your heart into finishing this project that puts the current evidence of medicine and all the data about this patient in front of the physicians, nurses and ancillary staff who are caring for them so that they will never have the opportunity to be indifferent to your patient.Yes, your patient, they are after all, your patients.