What The Last Year Has Taught Me About Giving Back

Since the Thanksgiving holiday weekend has ended, I have been thinking about this past year. It seems this year has come and gone very quickly, and everyone I speak with lately says the same thing.

We are living life in a very fast moving world, making sure our practices are thriving and that our families are taken care of in their daily activities. We often forget to stop, take a breath and appreciate the day we are blessed with. 

This year, my husband and I are especially thankful for the gift from an anonymous kidney donor so my husband no longer has to be on a dialysis machine at night for 12 hours. We are also so thankful for the doctors, nurses, techs and other staff who took care of him at the hospital.

We have been celebrating Thanksgiving since January 26, 2018, the day of the transplant surgery. As you may have read my DPM Blog on this journey, I learned again how to appreciate my patients in a more meaningful way by understanding their perspective when they are sitting and waiting for me to see them at my office. I think about how we can make their experience a little less arduous by the small kind gestures that I or my office staff members can afford them. These gestures include offering a bottle of water, asking patients what times would be more convenient for their schedule when making follow-up appointments, sending all new patients a thank you card for the confidence they have placed in my staff and I to help resolve their foot condition.

As part of giving back and thanking those who touch our lives, my practice, along with the help of my patients, donates $1 of every office visit charge to four charitable organizations that my staff and I have chosen. I ask my patients to pick one of the charities on our list that best represent their values. I do not ask patients to contribute but I am surprised to find additional dollars in the donation jars at the front desk. This really shows me the kind and generous nature that many people have.

Now that Black Friday is over and we survived the lines to get that electronic item at the “sale price,” I hope we will all take a moment or two to reflect on the blessings in our lives. Spending time with family and friends creates memories that we will treasure for a lifetime, much more so than the purchases we scramble for this time of the year that often become forgotten once they are used up or go to the back of the closet.

I am truly grateful for the opportunities I have been afforded in my profession and especially to have this forum in Podiatry Today to share my expertise and thoughts with my colleagues with the goal of hopefully of being useful to our profession. I want to thank my colleagues who have gone out of their way to acknowledge my efforts by sharing how it has positively impacted them as well as those colleagues who have challenged me to look deeper into myself for other perspectives in what I am trying accomplish. I am so honored and humbled. Thank you.