Either you are important or you’re not

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

Professionals who say, “Well, it’s not life or death,” or “It’s not cancer therapy,” about their profession have a problem.

While the statement is factually true, its context is often to downplay the importance of the profession, the importance of their decisions, or the research that supports (or doesn’t support) it. Most often, its used in non-medical fields such as sport science.

You are either important, or you are not important. Your role is either substantial, or it’s negligible. And if it’s the latter and you want to make an impact in someone’s life, then maybe you should find another profession or job?

Life and death decisions and cancer therapy are dramatic contexts. It’s easy to see the stakes; and the time course for these effects are usually relatively imminent.

The slow death is, however, insidious and far less dramatic, but the stakes are just as high and the decisions no less important. We often read about how the life/death binary is not nearly as important as the quality of life — it’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years, as they say.

When someone fails to lose weight and keep it off under your supervision, it’s a loss of life in their years. When someone gets injured under your supervision, it’s a loss of life in their years. When someone fails to progress towards their goals under your guidance, it’s a loss of life in their years.

They all die the slow death.

If the only way for your work to be meaningful to someone is for it to be in a dramatic life-or-death scenario, and you’re not working in life-or-death scenarios, then perhaps you need to either change your story around what is meaningful, or do work that will fit this narrow definition.

But don’t downplay your failures, or the failures of your field around, “It’s not cancer therapy.”

And if your work is meaningful and important, then you have a responsibility to ensure that it stays that way.

You, as a health professional, are important. Start there.

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