This was a very special graduation season for me, and I attended a very special graduation and celebrated it in novel, and most enjoyable way. I’ll get around to the celebration in another blog post, but for now we’ll concentrate of the graduation and what medical professionals face in the future.
I said this was special graduation for me. It’s always special when a family member you have known from birth gets to put “Doctor” in front of his name. I flew from Columbus, Georgia to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to attend the graduation of my nephew Gibson Gray – well, he’s actually my grand nephew since he is the son of my niece Janet Sue Gray – from the medical college of Nova Southeastern University.
As I sat with Gibson’s mom and dad, Janet Sue and Gordon Gray, his brothers, Schafer and Taylor, and his wife Catherine, I felt, with them, a great sense of elation. I mean, doing what it takes to become a physician is quite an achievement – and who doesn’t want to be able to say, “my son, the doctor,” or in my case, ” my nephew, the doctor” ?
It is a tremendous acheivement, considering all of the years of study, and the tremndous costs – the majority of medical students have to get student loans running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars – that it takes to get a medical degree.
Well, by George, our Gibson did it, and we are all bursting with pride. He is not through yet, though. Now he has to do three years of residency in a hospital. He will get paid, but it is a very low salary, and he won’t be able to pay back any of the loan until he finishes that.
Naturally, he and his family, and all of the medical graduates and their families, are keenly interested in what will happen to healthcare in the United States. It’s for sure that something is going to happen. The American people put it at the top of their list of concerns about the future. Costs have gone out of sight.
The issue was not ducked at the Nova Health Professions Division graduation ceremony. It was squarely faced by Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the keynote speaker. We’ll look at that it in a future post. Stay tuned.