One prominent characteristic of medicine is its ability to repeatedly remind you to be humble. There is always something new to learn about it, and in real life patients rarely present exactly as they do in the textbook. On top of that, health care workers commonly feel pressure to be perfect due to the potentially serious consequences of many medical mistakes. Of course, since we are human, we are bound to make a mistake at some point, so realistically all anyone can expect of us is our best effort. Yet, inevitably there will be someone who is not satisfied with our work, whether we misdiagnose a condition, send a prescription to the wrong pharmacy, give a wrong answer to a question from an attending physician, or enter an incorrect billing code. When you make a mistake, whether as a medical trainee or a medical professional, you may understandably feel inadequate. Yet, I encourage you to remember this message: You are enough.
Knowing our limits and utilizing resources
When I attended the 2026 Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) conference on medical student education, this topic was one of the themes of the opening session. Early in the session the speaker mentioned that we are trained in a culture that expects us to keep doing more and more, and she said, “When we say we are not enough, what we really mean is we are not infinite, but we aren’t meant to be.” The point was that we cannot be all things for all patients, which is why knowing our limits and knowing when to refer patients to outside resources or other practitioners are important. Utilizing outside resources and other practitioners does not mean we are inadequate. It means we recognize that sometimes the best way to help a patient is to help them access care that is not available where we are. By referring the patient elsewhere in these cases we help them far more than we would if we tried to serve them entirely on our own.
Fostering a culture of support in medical training
If you are still in medical training, I would encourage you to adopt this mindset now if you have not already. This might look like asking a professor or classmate for help understanding a concept or helping foster a culture of support at your school. That is, you can help normalize an environment in which everyone at your school is encouraged to ask for help when they need it, rather than an environment in which everyone is trying to outcompete everyone else. As long as all of us in health care are doing our best to help patients, we are all on the same team. Therefore, we should all be helping each other accomplish that mission, whether that means helping each other learn or contributing our specialized knowledge to a patient case. When we work together, we can provide the best comprehensive care possible for our patients.
Embracing our humanity and doing our best
Whenever you have an experience in medicine that leads to feelings of inadequacy, I encourage you to keep doing your best and be gentle with yourself. Remind yourself that even if you do not know as much about a certain topic as you would like, you still have the ability to learn more about it. There is no way anyone can know everything there is to know in medicine, and as long as you are doing your best, you are doing everything anyone (including yourself) can expect of you. In the words of the conference speaker, I encourage you to say to yourself, “I am a healer. I am a teacher. I am human, and I am enough.”
J. C. Sue is a practicing, board-certified family medicine physician, founder of the medical music study resource Tune Rx, and co-author of the American Family Physician article “Septic Arthritis: Diagnosis and Treatment.” In addition to practicing family medicine, he practices medical musicology, and as a medical musicologist, he strives to make learning medicine fun and memorable by explaining medical concepts through song lyrics, which he shares through Tune Rx. He desires to use his other performing arts interests, including dance, juggling, and acting, to enhance his practice of medical musicology and improve medical trainee wellness through simultaneous learning and entertainment.
