When confronted by great human suffering in war zones, what’s a doctor to do? Elizabeth Ghandakly

LAKEWOOD, Ohio — In medical school, each incoming class dedicated one full orientation day to go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. (just down the street from us at George Washington University). We all knew of the tradition, but some initially wondered why this would be a part of our medical school orientation.

If you have not been, the museum is an emotionally immersive experience of history and firsthand testaments of the Holocaust. It is moving and unforgettable.

After completing our tour, we all had a facilitated discussion after reading firsthand experiences of doctors during that time. These included American doctors who witnessed and treated concentration camp survivors as well as Nazi doctors who were involved in eugenics and experimentation. We quickly realized why this was a required experience for every student who would graduate from our school.

At graduation, many of us reflected on it as one of our most formative experiences and on how it shaped our view of the role and responsibility of being a doctor.

It taught us about speaking out in times of suffering and about guarding against silent complicity. It was a lesson that where we see suffering — even that far less severe than the horrors of the Holocaust — we have a place to speak.

Walking around my hospital over the past weeks, these lessons return.

One colleague learned his cousin, an 8-year-old girl in Gaza, was in a hospital with serious wounds and that the rest of her immediate family had all been killed. He lamented that she was sick and alone and there was nothing he could do.

After asking another, typically jovial colleague the standard “How’s it going?”, he responded, “I know we’re supposed to say ‘fine’ when someone asks that, but I can’t really say that these days.” I learned that a friend of his, an Israeli doctor, was killed in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Others who have not experienced close personal loss are not exempt. Doctors with no connection to the Middle East say things like. “I just feel like I should be over there helping somehow.” Others, similar to our patients, share their anxiety and distress in hearing and seeing horrific stories of war and human suffering — and thinking about the experiences of Israeli hostages and displaced Palestinians alike — each day, with no real end in sight.

No doubt, many of us charged with protecting health are walking around in a fog of guilt and helplessness.

But what’s a doctor to do?

Ours is a profession of doers. Doctors do not do well when we cannot take action to fix something. We know it contributes to burnout, but in this case, it is contributing to a collective emotional fatigue.

And there is apprehension. The decades of historical complexity, politicization, and deeply rooted wounds that underlie these current events paralyze many from lending our voices to the mix for fear of saying something wrong, appearing one-sided, or even risking our careers. And our knowledge of the history in our own country of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiments shows reason to fear for safety.

But ours is also a profession of boldness. We are the folks who open up chests, who help lungs breathe with machines, who walk into rooms of sick people during a pandemic in order to treat them. We do not shy away from doing what is right because it is hard.

Therefore, we should not shy away from lending our voices to stop human suffering. We should collectively call now for a real and prolonged humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza to allow for safe humanitarian aid and a diplomatic approach to resolution. This will save the lives of civilians, and of health care providers.

We as doctors routinely hold many truths together in one clinical encounter. Just as my treatment of any patient experiencing illness, trauma, or suffering does not negate any condemnation of personal or public health failures that may have contributed, my support of a cease-fire to prevent the death of thousands of innocent people while diplomacy can occur does not negate my condemnation of the horrible attack that occurred on Oct. 7. Our calling must always be to treat the suffering in front of us. And we can lend our voices toward reducing pain, suffering, and death today.

So, what’s a doctor to do? History has taught us that doctors have a role in speaking out to prevent suffering and death. At the end of the day, global conflict will not be solved by those of us in white coats, or even bloodied scrubs. But wherever health is impacted — as it so clearly is in the conflict zone in Gaza — we have a place and a voice. Let us remember to ground ourselves to what has always been our calling: to listen with compassion and to advocate for the prevention of harm in all that we do.

Dr. Elizabeth Ghandakly is a resident physician in internal medicine in Cleveland. She graduated from medical school at The George Washington University and completed her master’s degree in bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to medical school, she practiced corporate law after receiving her law degree from The Ohio State University. Opinions expressed are her own and do not represent those of her employer or affiliated institutions.

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