Effect of Culture - Thanksgiving - A Time to Say Thanks

Thank you, whoever and wherever you are, for the privilege of being a doctor.


Thank you for granting me the abilities, , the gifts, and the intelligence to help others.


Thank you for the good fortune to live in a free country, where I can choose the specialty I please, where I can practice where I please as I please, and where I can say what I please.


Thank you for the honor of serving patients – for being available to them, listening to them, comforting them, finding what’s wrong with them, treating them.


Thank you for allowing me to reside in a nation encouraging innovation and rewarding ingenuity for developing medical technologies, devices, and drugs.


Thank you for offering so many options and providing so many flexibilities to pursue what I want and to continue to learn.


Thank you for our political system – the longest standing democracy on the planet.


Thank you for the environment of freedom encouraging expression of honest differences of opinion.


Thank you for permitting to live in this vast nation with its abundant natural resources, stretching from sea to shining sea, from Alaska to Hawaii, and from Canada to Mexico.
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Thank you for encouraging an open and diverse culture with a common language that attracts more immigrants than any other country and remains the magnet of opportunity for the rest of the world.


Thank you for allowing me to live under the system of capitalism and freedom, which despite its occasional inequities, generates the highest standard of living and best urgent medical care system known to man.


Thank you for the freedom to choose whatever doctor, alternative provider, hospital, or medical facility that suits my intelligence, fancy, convenience, or proximity to home.


Thank you for our medical teachers, now in 125, soon to be 131, medical schools, teaching hospitals, the VA system, and everywhere else teachers and mentors lend a hand up.


Thank you for my colleagues – for the medical sisterhood and brotherhood - who set examples for me, tolerate me, and support me in darkness and light.


Thank you for the ability to state my mind to my local, state, specialty, and national medical societies, to politicians at every level, to the local media, and to whomever else who will listen.


Thank you to wives, husbands, children, significant others, and whoever else listens to us, supports us, and loves us.


Thank you for the warmth and comforts of home and family and the ample food and drink.


Thank you for letting me say this on this Thanksgiving Day in this magnificent country of ours – the home of the Brave, the True, The Free, and the Grateful.