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Vital Signs
Reflections
on Service and Social Justice
Letter
from the Editor, Mark Stoltenberg, SSOM 2011
Like many other
students here at Stritch, I was first drawn to Loyola largely because of its
dedication to service. Yes, there were impressive opportunities such as the
international service immersion trips and the community health clinic we
help to staff once a week. But, I think what really sold me was when I heard
that a group of students got together to make peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches every Wednesday to give to the inner-city homeless. You could
occasionally find large, top-down service initiatives at other medical
schools, but nowhere else did I ever hear an example of such simple and
unassuming compassion as the PB & J’s.
 Hence, when the
time finally came to begin medical school last July, I was overflowing with
motivation and excitement. However, it did not take long for me to realize
something—medical school can be tiring. Sure, at certain points of the year
our studies require a significant amount of just brute time, but I think
what surprised me most is how much energy the training process can
require. This became especially clear to me one afternoon while taking a
study break with an old friend. Witnessing my exhaustion, she asked, “why
are you doing this whole medical school thing again?” Normally, I would have
gone into an extended—and probably obnoxious—monologue regarding vocation,
service, and faith and how they each had compelled me towards a career in
medicine. But this time, the question left me stunned. Sitting there
quietly, I realized that for the first time in years, I couldn’t come up
with an answer.
It was partly
because of this experience that Vital Signs was started. The more I
thought about it, the more I realized that my experience was probably not
all that unique. I feel like most medical students, especially here at
Loyola, share my interest in service. I would also guess that many feel
extremely busy and get tired from time to time. Thus, it is not much of a
stretch to predict that a sense of separation and disconnection from one’s
underlying ideals might be a common experience among medical students. As my
friend’s question helped me to realize, after going a few hectic months
without consciously reflecting on my values, they were actually beginning to
blur. It seems to be a lot like a foreign language—when you don’t use it,
you begin to lose it. I guess just as the details of the brachial plexus
start to fade from our minds just weeks after an anatomy final, so too might
we begin to lose our moral memory without engaging it. We hope this
publication might provide a small opportunity to remember.
 As invaluable as
this type of personal reflection is, we also hope to reach beyond it through
fostering conversations so that we might learn from the vast experiences we
each bring to the table. You might think that because we are all in medical
school, we students share a fairly common definition of service. I have
found this to be far from the case. Some see service as studying as hard as
they can in order to become the most competent and able physicians possible
for their future patients. Others are compelled towards more political aims,
hoping to use their weight as future doctors to advocate for meaningful
change. Still others feel called towards a more personal kind of service,
working directly with those in need to not only offer support, but also
presence and compassion. And finally, still others live out service through
the
 simple act of loving and supporting their families and friends. Though
we may individually have an affinity for one of these various perspectives,
it might be a mistake to not carefully consider the others. In my own life,
it has often been through engaging those conceptions which I do not hold or
even understand that I have best been able to refine and rethink my own
constructions. And maybe even more importantly, the most responsible way
forward rarely seems to be found through focusing on a single type of
service (a mistake I have made countless times), but rather in the much more
arduous task of balancing each.
For this first
issue, we chose to focus on the theme “From Idealism to Action.” We often
hear about how medical school changes students. This transition can
sometimes be construed as going from a naïve idealism in one’s early years
to a more realistic cynicism towards the end. As intriguing as this pattern
is in itself, what especially interested us was how this phenomenon might be
applied to service. Certainly the energy of first year students could be a
very good thing if put into the right efforts. And, just as certainly, there
is probably no better source on what these “right efforts” might be than the
wisdom and experience of upper classmates. It was therefore the goal of each
of our three feature articles to use the experience of older students (and
our own Dr. Sheehan) as a lens to help focus and apply the energy of us
younger ones.
One final note—as
grandiose as some of these aspirations might sound, our goals for Vital
Signs are actually far from spectacular. Engaging and expanding our
values and coordinating energy with experience in order to achieve effective
change are indeed good things to strive for. But, let’s not kid ourselves -
each take lifetimes to achieve. Rather, it is our simple hope that these
pages might provide a brief chance to reflect and maybe lead to a few
discussions that may not have happened otherwise. We hope you enjoy reading,
and we very much look forward to having those conversations.
Vital Signs Editorial Board and Support Staff
Senior Editor: Mark Stoltenberg
Managing Editors: Stephen Lane, Jason Somogyi
Supporting Editorts: Tracy Lyons, William Navarre, Masey Ross
Design Manager: Jason Rice
Photographer: Kathleen Mishler
This project would not have been possible
without the generous support of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics &
Health Policy. To Dr. Kuczewski and the rest of the staff: Thank you
so much for giving us this opportunity to prepare for future careers in
service through reflecting on questions of justice.
Questions, comments or concerns? Is there
a certain topic of interest you would like to hear about for the next issue?
Or even better, are you interested in writing, taking pictures or joining
the Vital Signs board?
Email us at vitalsigns@lumc.edu
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