Always Keep Your Clothes in the Car

In helping to organize many different educational environments in the School of Medicine and the Department of Surgery at the University of Virginia over the last 30 years, my colleagues and I have long recognized that our students and trainees, while uniformly well prepared academically for their respective missions, often take inadequate care of themselves. Everyone who has flown on a plane will recall that the flight attendants always tell passengers that, if oxygen is needed, one must put one's own mask on first, before helping others put their masks on. And the obvious reason for that admonition is that you cannot help others if you, yourself, are impaired. This admonition applies equally to those who have committed their lives to helping others, which, in the case of our protégés and ourselves, is through medicine and surgery.