By Nico Belliard ’25

We enter medical training with an idealism fixed on helping those who suffer. It’s a beautiful impetus, and one that gets us through the endless nights studying for prerequisites and preclinicals.

Then one day—on the wards, in the clinic—we learn the truth of our humanity: sometimes, we can’t help our patients.

Modern medicine is both miraculous and meager. We can offer patients so much, yet simultaneously, so little. Behind flashy clinical trials, expensive therapies, and lifesaving procedures is the harsh reality that we aren’t God. We enter this line of work ready for action, yet completely unprepared to show up at the bedside empty-handed.

Maybe the issue is more existential. What if, buried deep within a desire to help, is a denial of our lack of control? The feeling of powerlessness is difficult to deal with, especially for highly educated professionals in the United States in the 21st century. Maybe by doing, we shield ourselves from bearing witness to the suffering all around us. Maybe, in the words of Dylan Thomas, we are trying to “rage against the dying of the light.”

But what if we’ve been misguided by these unconscious behaviors? And what if what we need instead is a prayer for when we’ve reached the end of the road.