By Dr. Silvana Ruli
I found him lying there, weakened, consumed by pain, broken and disappointed... but still sweet, as always.
A simple woman, but dear to me for some rare values that I have always appreciated: dedication, loyalty, humility.
In that hospital bed, a mother, wife, grandmother, and daughter appeared to me mercifully in the naked truth of human failure and far from any empty political rhetoric.
A bitter truth that is often ignored by many.
I, the skilled doctor, found myself faced with the most extreme limit I know: the inability to change a pain.
All my professional baggage could offer nothing but shame.
I fully felt the nakedness of pain and disappointment: Death, experienced as a rape.
Unable to offer him what I wanted as a doctor, I bent down and managed to give him only a single caress of his trampled dignity.
In the impossibility of a dignified peace for an extreme reality, that caress was all I could do.
Meanwhile, just a few meters away from this bed where life is worth a statistic, a screen talks about artificial intelligence in healthcare, about innovation and a futuristic future.
Absolutely agree. Innovative vision, but not coherent in my country.
No progress that does not reach the individual has any meaning in existence.
It is enough to enter a hospital and have treated patients to understand that we cannot start from drones and robots, but from the individual, from the lack of knowledge, from the lack of medicines, from time and serious care.
Before we talk about digital health, artificial intelligence, and futuristic strategies, with all their importance, let's remember the basis of real medicine:
We chose to be doctors and we cannot help but serve.
Anyone who doesn't have this in their core hasn't yet understood medicine.
No algorithm is needed without conscience and morality. No intelligent algorithm serves when there are hands reaching out for money and not serving properly.
Nina, and everyone like her, deserves us to step out of the comfort zone of silence.
I too... "the idol's doctor", who for 30 years has given life and endless hope, have a great need to no longer be ashamed in front of her and everyone.
I invite, with respect and pain, to start from the individual, from the reality that screams.
Let's start over from us, because progress is an arrival, but departure is responsibility and respect for suffering.
Before we promise what we don't have, let's give what we have to give.
Personally, I have yet to encounter any technology that can replace humanity.
As part of science, I have the deep conviction that there is no medicine based solely on science, without conscience, morality, and conscience.
Let's start by offering dignity.
