I am a Doctor. . .

Feature Narrative

By Sergio Sanchez Zambrano, MD

This article was originally published in the September/October 2025 issue of  Tarrant County Physician.

Recently, while evaluating annotations by a young medical student for potential publication in our journal, I objected to the fact that the author was referring to herself as a “provider.”

I do not know of ANY other profession as altruistic and generous as that of being a doctor.

I manifested my respect to the medical student for her generosity and the extent of her altruism. At that time, a Christmas present given to me by my wife came to mind—a copy of a poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson from Scotland (November 13, 1850–December 3, 1894). It is called “Eulogy of the Doctor.”

Robert Louis Stevenson’s prose is unique and needs no additional commentary; hence, I will simply “copy and paste.”

Eulogy of the Doctor

There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd the soldier, the sailor, the shepherd not infrequently, the artist rarely, rarelier still the clergyman, the physician almost as a rule.. He is the flower of our civilization and when that stage of man is done with, only to be marveled at in history he will be thought to have shared but little in the defects of the period and to have most notably exhibited the virtues of the race. Generosity he has, such as is possible only to those who practice an art and never to those who drive a trade: discretion, tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a thousand embarrassments; and what are more important, Herculean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that, he brings air and cheer into the sick room and often enough, though not so often as he desires, brings healing.

There is nothing else that I could add other than encouragement to all the doctors, young and old, to remember that we are not providers. We are DOCTORS.

I am just saying . . .