Over the years, I’ve noticed that many organizations for Christian physicians focus on primary care or surgery.  And I’ve noticed, over and over, that they focus on the primacy of overseas missions.

While I’m proud of all of my Christian brothers and sisters in medicine, I always felt that emergency medicine needed a special group of its own.  So it was with delight that I learned that the Christian Medical and Dental Association had started an emergency medicine section.

It is a new section, chaired by Bret Nicks, MD of Winston Salem, NC.  I recently spoke with Bret and we engaged in some encouragement and brain-storming about how to gather members for the section.  Bret had some great ideas, and I had a few thoughts of my own.

However, I haven’t done much with it.  Life being what it is, I’ve just been busy.  But now, cleaning up e-mails after weeks of inattention, I wanted to throw it out to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ who struggle day in and day out in the emergency departments of the world.

Why do we need this?  Because we are engaged in one of the most difficult practices in the history of medicine.  You see, dear ones, every day in the emergency room is like a day on a mission field.  Every day we see suffering, pain, loss, hopelessness.  Every day we confront the consequences of sin and guilt, of lawlessness and rage.  Every day we are reminded of the fallen state of our world, our very physical universe.

In emergency medicine, we are on the leading edge of the battle eternal.  And we need one another for encouragement.  You know how Paul talks about the shield of faith?  Well, I read ancient history.  A shield was meant to cover your body in battle, and also the man to your right.  We need to be shields of faith for one another.

We need to help each other with fatigue, anxiety and burnout. We need to speak words of blessing to one another.  We need to pray for one another!  We need to recommend books and speakers, conferences and other good works. And we need to constantly remind one another that no one else in medicine practices in the manner that we do.

You can’t walk into someone’s quiet office, with the clean magazines and lovely paintings of Jesus, with the soothing music on the radio, and punch the wall, threaten the staff, vomit Vodka and expect to be rushed back and evaluated with all gravity.  That’s what we do, however.  All day, all night, we take everything that comes our way.

And we can only do it, and only continue to do it, with the help of God, the brotherhood of our Lord and the indwelling of his Spirit…if only to keep us from choking someone!  And in order to keep us loving as well as we can.

Emergency medicine is the laboratory of both the fall and grace.  Let’s unite and tell the world!

If you’re interested, please contact me and send me some information about yourself.  We can do far more for the kingdom together than we ever can apart.

edwinleap@gmail.com

Here’s a link to the CMDA Emergency Medicine Section:

https://www.cmda.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Emergency_Medicine1

Yours in the struggle,

Edwin

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