Dr. Ahmed Bendary Shares 3 Critical Insights to Help You Build a Successful Career in Medicine

Our world is shifting. Our worldview is shifting. What this means is that a change is around the corner, and a massive paradigm shift is needed to cope with it. Fields and professions, including writing, teaching, doctor, and scientist, are evolving rapidly and transforming the world around them. If you aspire to be a doctor and build a solid career in medicine, you too need to know what your field expects from you. Here are three critical insights from Dr. Ahmed Bendary, a practicing cardiologist and medical educator, to help you understand how to offer the best of you to the world of medicine and get the best in return.

Be a good communicator

Being a doctor is one of the most respected professions in the world. A good doctor has the power and ability to stand between life and death. However, apart from reverence, there’s another common emotion people tend to associate doctors with: fear. As embodiments of vast amounts of knowledge, whose every minute is precious, people tend to maintain a respectful distance even with their own physicians. Why? Perhaps it’s the fear of sounding stupid or disturbing the doctor’s deep thoughts. 

Dr. Ahmed Bendary believes that this fear needs to go away. He says, “I would hold doctors responsible for creating this scary image in general. I have often met doctors who are rude to their clients because they believe that the answers will be far above their heads. This elitist view has my empathy but only so much. I encourage the young doctors of tomorrow to learn the art of communication. To break down complex matters into simple, digestible bits. Intimidation only leads to confusion. When a patient feels free in their doctor’s presence, not only are they able to explain themselves clearly to the doctor but they also tend to get better sooner.”

Keep up with technology

As if being a doctor wasn’t back-breaking enough, the young lot is now also expected to keep up with the upcoming trends in medicine and tech. Dr. Bendary believes that what seems complicated can be made easy only if one truly loves what they do. He adds, “Technology is helping treatment and cure like never before. It’s advancing rapidly, and as the doctor of tomorrow, you need to stay up to date with the changes. This goes in line with discoveries being made in understanding human anatomy, psychology, medicine, etc., and helps to offer the best cure for the problem at hand. A doctor’s job is to be vigilant and curious, with or without a patient. If you don’t love the job you do and don’t consider it as the purpose of your life, you lay open the road for disillusionment for yourself and your patient.”

Collaborate

We don’t think of medicine or surgery as a collaborative effort. Generally, it’s just one doctor doing one thing at a time for one patient. However, that’s not true. As the world is transforming and coming together like a big giant wave, more and more people, irrespective of their profession, are beginning to see practical use in value exchange. Dr. Bendary adds, “The hierarchical system does not mean cutting off the whole in parts. Be it the person who lets in the patient, or the one who officially admits them, or the doctor under whose supervision the patient comes, everyone must co-ordinate like cogs in a wheel. As young doctors, you must also learn to co-operate with each other because without a well-organized coordination, the hospital can turn into a place of complete disorder.”

A doctor never sleeps is an adage that sums up the life of doctors like Dr. Ahmed Bendary. As we enter the 3rd decade of this millennium, doctors indeed have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, as they stand at a point of change in terms of expectations and delivery.