Man as a Biopsychosocial Being (A Reflection)

            All throughout my college years, I have encountered and asked several questions, either to myself or to another person. One of these questions involved the mind-boggling sentence: Who am I?

            Well I never asked myself further on that. Maybe I tried, but I knew then that I would just create chaos in my mind if I ever attempt to answer that question completely. I never dared, until recently. And I changed the question (so as not to erase my sanity again) into: What influence(s) me into becoming who I am?

            Is it encoded already in my DNA that I will become the person I am now? Is it because of how my family treated and lived up with me as I grow? Is it because of the culture and beliefs they nurtured in me? Are they the choices that I make? The feelings that I evoke? The thoughts that I consider? How about my church, my schools, my friends? Yes, my friends, as the cliché goes: “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.” Are they indeed the people around me?

            Man is complex. So I say that all of these things/factors do influence me in my becoming of a person. And I suggest even more that the one with the greatest impact on me is the surrounding people around me—my parents who united to create me, my family, church and schools who guided my thoughts, behavior and emotions through the years, and my friends in whose company I can find my self at liberty. Yes, I am a biopsychosocial being. And my history proves me that it’s true.

            So how does it connect with medicine?

Clearly, technology has changed the way we live in all aspects, even in the way we think and articulate our thoughts. And maybe we are very well overwhelmed by this fast change that we have forgotten out roots. In medicine, for example, the usual (or observable) approach is that a patient feels something and goes into a hospital for a check-up, then the doctor identifies the problem and gives the solution, and the patient goes out to test the solution. Whatever happens afterward, I don’t know because another batch of patients comes in and I’m busy brainstorming on where I can get my lunch in an instant. And I’m outta here.

But, wait! As I go out of the hospital, I see the same person who went in earlier this day. He was a sidewalk vendor, cooking and selling barbecues. I remember him telling the doctor he’s been coughing hardly the whole week. Hasn’t the doctor told him he might get a lung cancer on continuing to inhale the smoke of charred meat? Well, I hope he has.

You see, this is what bothers me ever since I got into this medical school: How do I see myself as a full-pledged physician? Will I work for money, or for service? Will I tend to bury myself with work and forget the purpose of becoming a medical doctor? Will I overlook the patient as a subject and see him as an object instead? Will it be possible that I may someday forget what man is as a biopsychosocial being?

I don’t know about that, it’s much uncertain. But what I know now is this basic knowledge that everything I do creates a change in the universe. I influence other people like others influence me too. And having this basic notion in mind, may I never forget that I am with the people, I am for the people, and I am who I am because of the people.