Is Being an Oncologist Merely a Profession?

An oncologist faces families under extreme tension. The patient's life hangs by a thread; overanxious family members have long since been pulled off their normal life track, and the oncologist is their last hope of salvation. If the physician can bring them hope of being saved, he saves a family on the verge of collapse. Professional integrity is especially important for oncologists, because the task they face is truly not merely treating the patient.

When people face the ordeal of life and death, they easily fall into an extreme state. If a tumor physician exploits this psychology to extort money from patients, it is very easy to succeed. But for most impoverished patients, such conduct is no less than taking a life. Because a patient's treatment course is usually long, when one treatment fails and the patient's money has already been drained by the hospital, the patient has no means to try another treatment—and thus loses the chance that might have saved him.

I hope that when my life's duties are fulfilled, I will no longer have to scrape by for a living, and can devote myself wholeheartedly to treating tumor patients, reducing their costs as much as possible so as to help more impoverished patients gain a chance at survival. The great modern physician Jiang Chunhua once said that a person who studies medicine can master it only when his fundamental purpose is to save the dying and heal the wounded, not to get rich by practicing. I deeply agree with his words. The spiritual joy of successfully treating a patient with a stubborn disease is far beyond what money can buy.

All these years I have been treating tumor patients; my own mother was also a tumor patient. Having watched family after family be reduced to poverty by tumors, many ending with both the patient gone and the money spent, I feel deep sympathy for this group of tumor patients. I am constantly learning from various medical classics, trying my best to find the cheapest yet most effective medical options for them. Over time, patients have built very friendly relationships with me. But this style of practice is out of step with this era, and my own life has inevitably become more frugal than before. Yet I do not regret my choice in the least, because I have obtained from it the happiness I was seeking.