On Choosing a Doctor at Pingxintang
By what do we measure a doctor's character and skill? By professional rank or pay-grade? By age or seniority? Not at all. A doctor can only be measured by the patients' own word-of-mouth. The doctor's duty is only this: to relieve the patient's suffering, settle body and heart, and out of a great-merciful, sympathetic heart that wants nothing for itself, save every living being under Heaven.
Medicine is the art of humaneness. Those who take medicine as a means to seek wealth, or as a ladder to climb in rank — though they are not few in number, and we have seen plenty — are in the end despised by our kind and held shameful by all.
Virtue comes before craft, and the high in virtue often go together with the fine in craft. Flatterers and schemers; those who guard their name and protect themselves; those who fake the motions and play at chance; those who envy and slander — they may get away with it for a moment, fool the people in their own corner — but losing virtue, they will lose craft; their clinical effect will be hugely discounted, and progress will stop.
Looking back over Pingxintang's ten years, the work of choosing the doctor has rested wholly with the patients. The patients' eyes are the clearest: those who rely on swelling advertising and boastful self-promotion find no market here. The patients' feeling is the deepest: those who put on a show and pad out the numbers will sooner or later show their true face.
To respect the patient's choice and rely on the patients to pick the doctor is the one right way to measure a doctor. Those who, on medicine's front line, work earnestly, carefully, solidly, and with an open heart — these are the best doctors in the patients' hearts. They will have their momentary mistakes, their helpless moments of heart-piercing self-reproach, their unspeakable awkwardnesses, their heart-wrenching cases beyond saving — but from each of these they will draw lessons, fine-tune their craft, and climb higher. Given time, they will surely come to be understood and respected by their patients.
The patient is the doctor's best examiner. They don't read your papers; they don't listen to your defenses; they don't weigh your origins; they don't fear your titles; they don't fear an isolated short-run misjudgment. So long as there are clear-eyed patients, there will be a steady stream of fine doctors. The doctors who emerge as gold from the great wave of patients will surely shine — history tells us this, and the present keeps proving it again.
The State may name great doctors; Tongrentang may name great doctors. Pingxintang does not. Not to name them does not mean we have none — Pingxintang relies only on the patients. The great doctor in the patient's heart cannot be denied by anyone.