AMEN Australia 2019 Conference: Witnesses Unto Me

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Joy Akrawi

Life as an intern and a Christian/Ministry in the small things

So what is internship? Does anyone know How many of you have actually been interns? Put your hand up. Okay. How many years ago was that? No, I'm joking. Okay, so this is kind of a portrayal of what an intern is like. Internship is the first year after graduating from medical school where you're not allowed, you are now allowed to work in a hospital under supervision of a more clinical, more senior clinician. It's also the year that you transition from full-time study to full-time work potentially 12 hours a day, five days a week. Completely different to your non-med friends who are working eight hours a day. You can no longer use the excuse, oh I don't know, I'm just the med student. You can no longer go to all your friends outings cuz you miss out on the birthdays and Christmas parties cuz you're either working, sleeping, or pretending to be working since you've lost all ability to socialize in a normal environment. People say internship is one of the most difficult years of your medical career, mainly because it's such a transition from being a med student to a doctor with responsibilities and a heavy workload. Some enjoy their internship, others drag their feet along their way. My experience has been a little bit of both. I've been blessed to attend a few Amen conferences in my med school years and I think it was such an encouragement I was able to see what it looks like to be a witness before I started. And I was really, really keen. I even wrote down like all these notes on my phone of what I'll do if I was a clinician and oh I'll, you know, put up posters and I'll talk to people about Jesus and I would like pray in my clinic and da da da. And then I was like, oh wait, you don't get that as an intern. You gotta go through the public system first. Yes. So I had this life thought out for me but it wasn't an immediate thing that I could get to and I was like kind of confused God, how do I, how do I do this then? How do I be an intern and a witness together in a public system? I quickly realized that this experience of becoming a extremely junior doctor could turn out to be not only an experience where I can witness to people by talking about Jesus, but mainly how like by showing them who Jesus is through my character. So we've talked about being a witness this whole weekend and I just wanted to go through some definitions. Trusty Google told me what they were. The definitions of being a witness is having knowledge from observational experience. So having knowledge of who God is, one that gives evidence or proving through your life that God exists and that he's love and to testify to. So telling others about your experience with God, I found that directly telling people about my experience with God wasn't the only way of witnessing and it was quite difficult to do that to people. When your doctors are kind of like watching over you, it's a little bit scary. But there were many other ways and one of the verses that I found really summed up my experience this year is this John 1334 to 35 a new command I give you love one another as I have loved you so you must love one another by this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. So I started my internship without any big plans for witnessing just a plan to keep on going, take God with me wherever I went, which is Acts one, eight and love whoever came in my way January this year I started out on a cardiology rotation. I was keen to learn, do my best, you know, make friends and da da da. But cardio is really intense guys. You get 30 patients a day, maybe you might have to discharge 10 of them in a day. You have no idea what's going on cuz you just graduated as a med student. You've got multiple nurses contacting you, paging you throughout the day. You can't even go to pee without taking your pager with you cuz someone will contact you. It's, it's intense. Like I found it really hard. I mean others, others might find it pretty easy and breezy but it was difficult for me. I got to the point where I was like, you know, crying in the first week because I couldn't answer all my pages. The nurses will ask me all these random questions and I'll be like, I'll, I'll just pray to God. God just shut my mouth because all I wanna say is, did you not read my documentation? It was so clearly re like put out there or I would say to them, oh I'd want to say to them, trust me, I'm not gonna go home till my discharge summaries are done. You don't need to page me every 10 minutes. I needed God to remind me that even though the consultant who yelled at me for asking for a neuro consult, which my boss asked me to do was only human and that it didn't, I didn't need to be offended by what he or she said and I didn't need to tell everyone else about how rude she was to me it was quite difficult. But despite this frantic mess, God shaped me into a person that though wasn't the smartest or quickest intern, was kind to both patients and nursing staff. My advanced trainee spoke to me afterwards and one of my colleagues as well and said, I've heard so much feedback about you two out of the four teams here, so eight jmo, the nurses think that you two worked best with them, always answering pages and being kind. It would be a pleasure for me to give you a reference to any of your future employees, so please, please do. And I was like, oh cool, I'm in one a big guys. But honestly all of that came from God and after that rotation they knew that I was a Christian, they found out I was a Christian and I really hope and pray that they put together that the kindness in my character only came from God himself. Once that first month of craziness settled, I turned from praying for myself mainly to praying for my patience. Ooh, there we go. Sorry, be kind is the first way to witness. So praying for my patience. So initially I was like, oh I can't pray with the patients, like people will be judging me or I don't know, I'm a little bit scared of what people think of me at the moment or I was, so I'd drive in my car on the way to work and I'll keep it quiet, I won't put any music on. And I was like, okay God. Like let's do this. Let's pray for these patients. I start praying, praying, praying like God, can this patient please get through the angiogram or right. I don't want any punctured anything like make them come out. Okay Lord, may this person please get their pacemaker. They've been waiting for three weeks in the public system like just pray. God please, please leave with these people. And just praying for the Holy Spirit to come into your life as well as you talk to people, as you shine God's, God's light to them is so important and it uplifts you, brings you closer to the patients that you speak of as well to God. And it just really prepares you for your day. Now I did have one opportunity where I was able to pray with a patient and that like I've only had one this year, but it was emotional and it was crazy. There was this one 50 year old lady, she had congestive cardiac failure and she came into CCU and she had multiple complications, all these issues going on and she was a cute little islander lady. And I went in and I saw this like whiteboard that had a verse of eyes eye written up on there and I was like, oh is that yours? Did your daughter write that? And she's like, yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh that's such a nice first, it's so comforting, isn't it? She's like, yeah. And so we started talking about church, started talking about all these different things and then I had to go and see the other patients and whatnot. But I'd come in every three days to re redo her cannula cuz of that risk of infection apparently. So I'd come in every couple of days and do her cannula and you spent, don't underestimate the time that you spend with someone reciting a cannula cuz you can say so much and learn so much from them. So yeah, I put in her cannulas a few times and we grew our relationship together and at one point it came to a time where I was in a family conference, not related to her but for another patient and my pager went off and I look at it and I was like, oh no, it's a met call and her bed is on this pager. I'm like, no God, please, no, she's my favorite patient. I'm not allowed to say that. But no. So I prayed and prayed while I was in the con, while I was in in the family conference and I thought, God, like my reg will go see them. I know that's okay, I'm the most junior person, I can't do anything anyway, I'll just finish this conference and go. So I prayed and you know, finished the conference and I respectfully ran out. I went to go see her and I just saw five doctors walk out of the room and they were all talking and she had like hypotension and so it was a little bit worrying but not too much it. Like she was stable. And I went to go have a chat with her and I like, I walked into her room and there was just a nurse left over and I said, are you okay? And she's like, oh not really. And I was like, oh, what can I do for you? I mean everyone else has done medical stuff, but what can I do for you? And she's like, just call my daughter please. So I went, called her daughter and came back and at like this, at this point the Holy Spirit was speaking and I didn't know if he meant to pray out loud with her or to just pray in my mind, but I thought, okay, no, I'll try it, I'll give it a go. And so I'm like, did you want me to pray with you? And she's like, yeah, is that okay? So I said okay. And so I grabbed her hand and before we even started to pray, she had tears coming down her eyes and I was like, no, here we go. But it was the most beautiful experience pairing with this patient. And you know, I didn't have the answers. I'm the most junior person on the team, I have no idea what's going on. But she, she really found comfort in I think having another person that believes in God coming to see her and knowing that they were part of the team looking after her. So that was really, really special. Praying with patients are amazing. Praying with your colleagues for patience. I have like a Christian friend that's not Adventist that we pray together for patients every time we get together. It's not a common thing, but after we have lunch or something, we'll be like, oh, how are your patients going? How are yours going? Hey. And then we'll just pray together for them. And it does bring some encouragement there and it also helps you refocus with God. Now I don't have too much time left, so I'll go through these really quickly. Another way that you can witness as an intern is advocate for your patients. I had some, had one patient that came into cardio after being admitted under neuro for a stroke. He was diagnosed with bra taki syndrome. So he pretty much had an arrhythmia and it sent up a clot to his brain caused the stroke. And so he was waiting for a pacemaker once again for three weeks. And we didn't understand what kind of death visits he had. He was walking around everywhere, he was cracking jokes. He's one of those, you know, manly man that everyone loves. And it wasn't until my boss said isn't something that's not right. So I did an mmse, which is a cognitive kind of test and I was like, look, humor me for one second, what year do you think it is? And he's like, Hmm, 1986. And I was like, ah Tom, you are hilarious. That's so funny, but really what year is it? And he goes, 1986. And I was like, ah, what? Okay. And by then we went through the M M S E and he didn't score as well as I expected. And it was just like, ah, something's really going on. It was that point that I started advocating for him and trying to raise the issue that he's not safe to go home cuz he lives at home alone. He still thinks he's married to his ex-wife of 20 years and his ex-wife was calling and trying to get doctors to help. And I wasn't able to help in many ways, but I tried to raise it to my boss and by the end of it, my team ended up calling me or or saying that this was Joy's patient. Every time we walked past him, oh, let's skip Joyce's patient, she can deal with him later. I'm like, why is it Joyce's patient? They're like, cuz ah, you deal with all the social issues. And I'm like, ah, thanks guys. But social is part of the rest of the human body. It's part of the holistic health outcome. And he could not go home safely. So advocating for our patients are such an important thing. And though you're not speaking to them about Jesus, Jesus himself advocated for us for his patience and for us in the sanctuary witnesses as an intern, you can talk about the Sabbath. It's such an easy thing to talk about. So people will ask, what are you doing on the weekend? Oh, I'm going to church. Oh, why aren't you working on Saturday? Oh, I've swapped it off with someone else so I can go to church. Oh, why do you go to church on Saturday? Not Sunday? Ah, let me tell you all about that. There's so many ways that you can talk to people about it. Not just your patients, but your colleagues. Just have a few verses here. Another thing is, I, I found myself getting to a stagnant point where I was doing geriatrics and I came to geriatrics and I was like, oh, I'm so excited to deal with older people. Ha ha And half my patients were palliated and the other half of them were pretty much like delirious and punching people. So I was like, how do I minister to these people? God tell me. And I went through like six weeks of this rotation. I'm like, God, like I don't get it. I, I don't, I can't find myself witnessing to people, I don't know what my purpose is here. And I'll tell people at church, I'm like, gosh, I'm so confused. I don't have a purpose right now. And they, you know, they're like, just keep praying about it. Keep praying about it. And at one point I realized, like I saw a patient actually that was refusing to take medications. And I'm like, why? Why? This will help you. You've been here for five weeks. Get out. You, you can get your antibiotics. This will help with your u t i, it will help everything. And she didn't get it. She was cognitively impaired. And I was like, I, I just don't get it. And then God like turns the picture around and he's like, joy, maybe you are just like this cognitively impaired patient. Maybe, maybe I've got the answer for you, but you are not actually listening and you think you know best. And I was like, oh, oh wait, here we go. And it was just a reminder that, you know what other people have been saying during this conference, we need to know God before we share the God that we know. So it was a reminder that I needed to continue to get to know God before, like as I continued on to witness to other people, people. So yeah, God was good in leading me through that and teaching me more lessons. And my last point is love, love, love your patients. They will never forget you. I had an alcoholic patient come into Bathurst ed and she didn't wanna come in. The police officer sent in and she was just like, I don't wanna be here. Oh, here we go. And I'm like, okay, come on in. How are you? How are you feeling? And I was like, God, please help me be good to this patient. I don't want her to hate the system because of me. And she comes in and she's like, I don't wanna be here, take me out. I've got this back pain and no one's fixing it. And I was like, let's try and fix that for you. So we put her in her bed, did some investigations, and in the end we didn't find an acute cause. But I got to talk to her once again, putting a cannula in. I got to talk to her and she's like, you know, I wasn't always an alcoholic. Oh, I've al sorry, I've always been an alcoholic, but I haven't always wanted to be. My mom was an alcoholic and, and she's the one that birthed me while she was on drugs and alcohol and I just have no choice and I just really want to leave it. And I'm like, you know, that's okay. We can go through it step by step. And she goes, thank you for being so kind to me. Like it's, it's different. And I was like, oh, you are welcome. Like, I hope you go home and, and you feel better. And we gave her some medications and sent her home. But in a place where Ed, in a, in a rural ed where you get a lot of people that come in for drugs and alcohol and you kind of, you know, put a bandaid on and send them off, it's different for her to have someone that was a little bit more kind. So being kind and loving to your patients, they will never forget that. And though they may not know that you believe in Jesus, they'll see him through you. Yeah. So just to wrap up once again, for, for me this year as an intern, my foundation was based on this verse that I only found out this morning, John 13. Once again, a new command I give you love one another by this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. So whatever situation you're in, whether you're an intern, you're a student, you're a doctor, or allied health, whatever you're doing, even if you're not in the place where you want to be, God can use you at the moment. And just to share his love, even if you don't say the word, Jesus will make a difference. This media was brought to you by Audio verse, a website dedicated to spreading God's word through free sermon, audio, and much more. If you would like to know more about audio verse or if you would like to listen to more sermons, please visit www.audio verse.org.

Back to Menu

Life as an intern and a Christian/Ministry in the small things

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine