COM Outlook Winter 2020

+ NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | 35 operating room table. Our purpose as people is to bring a certain joy and comfort to each other throughout life, and it is our unique role as physicians to blend this level of humanity into our everyday practices. While I understand we all have our individual motives, and luckily, not everyone has been the patient in this scenario, I encourage all of my colleagues to use your osteopathic training and to think of yourself as the vulnerable one on the exam table. How would you want to hear of a cancer diagnosis? How would you speak to yourself after hearing bad news? And, most of all, how are you going to encourage optimism, compassion, and lightheartedness in the face of the death that you will inevitably see? While I choose not to dwell on the past, I do draw strength from these experiences, as they afford me constant reminders of reasons to have gratitude and humility. Medical school is hard. But remembering your motivation will lighten the pressing burden of grades and test scores. For me, whenever I have a hard day, I am reminded of my dad’s joke on the lobby bench, and I quickly change my mentality to keep things in perspective. o Emma C. Hall is a class of 2022 KPCOM student. Left: Emma C. Hall, top row, second from left, and some of her KPCOM Sigma Sigma Phi peers take a break from studying to volunteer at the Covenant Living of Florida senior facility in Plantation, Florida. Below: Hall with her parents Megan Gordon-Hall and John Hall “My dad told me to trust in life and to be strong. I was shocked that, as he was dying, he was actually comforting us. If he was scared, he never showed it. If he was in pain, he never displayed it.” —EMMA C. HALL