Hi everyone,
Residents flock to Yale from all over the world, leaving behind loved ones, navigating visa rules, and surmounting undue demands to prove their worth. I don’t understand why few academic programs recruit IMGs, but I’m glad we do. As a former Chief Resident, Max Stahl, reminded me yesterday, we’re doing something right: just look at the many IMGs who’ve scored competitive fellowships and faculty positions.
Our residents come from every continent but Antarctica, and our American graduates are equally diverse; many are immigrants or children of immigrants themselves. The faces on our webpage speak to a panoply of languages spoken, religions followed, and distances travelled.
In this spirit, please pause for a moment today to support members of our community with loved ones in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Iran—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends—whose lives are threatened by war. They too are part of our family.
Many residents come to work each day distracted by worry, beginning and ending their shifts with calls to the Middle East and prayers that the latest bomb or missile spared their homes. We’re all anxious. Each day since the October 7 terrorist attacks, we’ve fretted about the welfare and whereabouts of the hostages, the lives of civilians, and the likelihood that war would escalate as it is now.
We physicians are committed to the health and well-being of all people, without regard to race, ethnicity, or religion. We’re not experts on war, but we are experts on its impact, and it falls to us to bear witness and speak up for war’s victims.
Too many leaders underestimate, or misstate, the cost of war, particularly the inevitable trauma, no matter how “just” the cause. On this eve of October 7, please hold a place in your hearts for members of our community, who fear for their loved ones, and for the millions of people who long for the peace and safety we Americans too easily take for granted.
Have a good Sunday, everyone. I’ll be going out for a bike ride before settling into an afternoon of reviewing applications.
Mark
What I’m reading and listening to:
- A Ghostly Life for Those Trickling Back to the Villages Attacked on Oct. 7
- Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying
- The Complicated Legacy of Betty Ford’s Breast Cancer Story
- Sitting With Uncertainty
- Diagnosing Community-Acquired Pneumonia