Healthcare: a vocation?

Collins English Dictionary defines "vocation " at two distinct levels. The first is:

"a specified profession or trade"

and by that criterion healthcare disciplines like nursing, medicine, and OT automatically become vocations. So do accountancy, banking, commerce, distribution, economics...

But there is nothing in that definition that makes any health specialty anything different from " just another job " ; it is when we turn to the second definition we start to see something more.

This deeper level is:

"a special urge or predisposition to a particular calling or career, esp. a religious one"

This takes us to the concept of being "called " into what we do, and there is no doubt that today the language and the concept of vocation are deeply unpopular. Perhaps it’s the religious connotation that puts off our secular colleagues. Perhaps it puts us off too?

As the various health disciplines have become ever more technical, and perhaps less personal, isn’t it arrogant to think there is anything special about them at all?

It may be, and we shouldn’t even begin to compare ourselves with people like Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, or Paul, called and commissioned in the Bible for specific tasks.

But while being a health professional does not of course make us any better than anybody else, there are special privileges. Based on that lovely statement of Jesus recorded not in the gospels but in Acts 20: 35: "It is more blessed to give than to receive ", there can be very special rewards in the self-giving of serving the sick. Whether consciously in response to a specific call of God or not, those privileges constitute vocation as opposed to job.

Some days these last 30 years I have thought "Wow! I can’t believe they pay me money to do this ". That recognition of the intangible rewards of altruism is not an excuse for paying health professionals too little, but it is a reminder of the privilege of our vocation.

Have you still got that 'urge ' the dictionary spoke of?

If not, wouldn’t you like it back?

May God meet with us all this Healthcare Sunday.

Dr Andrew Fergusson