After all the unpleasantness of CHEGA’s presidential billboards comes a heartwarming story of gypsy success: Israel Paródia, 24, is Portugal’s first gypsy doctor. He started work at Lisbon’s Santa Maria Hospital on Sunday – in the middle of the flu epidemic – and posted an inspiring message over social media as he enjoyed a break for coffee during his 12-hour shift:
“Half way through my first day at work, at the beginning of a new year at Santa Maria Hospital, where I have started to exercise the profession that I chose for the rest of my life.
“In spite of the chaos of A&E, which can be suffocating for even the most experienced, I decided to register the moment with a smile. I smile, despite being on the frontline of human vulnerability and suffering, because I feel grateful and privileged to have been given this great responsibility of being able to be a light in what is often the darkest moment in the lives of patients and their families.
“It is this duality of feelings that makes me fall more and more in love with medicine with each day of work and learning.”
To Correio da Manhã, he says he “feels the weight of responsibility” as well as pride in being a gypsy.
Posting last year when he received his Masters in Medicine, Israel wrote: “Being a doctor is not just about knowing how to treat illnesses. Being a doctor is about knowing how to care for people, with all their particularities and vulnerabilities inherent to the human condition.
And it is in this commitment to humanity that the true beauty of medicine lies.
“The most human of sciences and the most scientific of humanities.”
Source: Correio da Manhã/ Facebook
