What Do I Know About Doctoring?
By Gaetan Sgro

Pitt Med Diploma Day 2026
Faculty Address

Nothing against the students’ judgement, but
I would not have invited myself to do this.

Michael Longley says
You don’t call yourself a poet.
It’s a bit like calling yourself a Saint.

If someone else wants to call you that?
Well, you accept it as a compliment
but you don’t inhale.

I keep returning to Robert Hayden’s lines
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

What do I know about doctoring?
About anything, really?

I stand before you, after all
the humble father of a tween.

I can actually feel her cringing.

Graduates, please
let your parents relish this day.

My training began with my mom
who taught me to care
with the measured tenderness of a nurse.
Tough love, at times, it seemed
But I never missed a day in school
and had all my broken bones repaired, eventually.

Think of all the patients who improve
absent or in spite of our interventions.
It must have been those guardians who healed
with the miracle of presence.

And speaking of religion
Sunday mornings, my dad taught us
talk was cheap
but following the sermon
we’d hustle to the basement to serve
lunch to men and women
with layered clothes and tired feet.

This was the way we learned
to count our blessings.
That we are all one family
all one stroke away.

After studying the texts
I made myself an apprentice
to masters of many disciplines
who shared this fundamental ethic: 

Find out what your patient needs
and make sure she gets it

Accomplish as much as possible
with your own hands: guide the catheter
adjust the bed; make sure that he can reach
his breakfast

When treatments and language are exhausted
put your body beside your patient’s body.
Take her hand and hold fast.

I learned from being a patient
that you never can predict
who will show up
at your bedside. In the neuro ICU
my best friend from first grade
brought me a hot dog, still warm
inside its aluminum sleeve.
I could not yet stand, much less
chew through a natural casing.

That’s still one of the kindest things
anyone has done for me.

My first patient was a woman my age
whose shins burned with the hot embers
of erythema nodosum. I felt helpless
and cursed my limited knowledge.

Today, I have just enough knowledge
to recognize my limits.

One weekend, I attended
the final hours of an old priest’s life.
I thought I was agnostic, and yet, we prayed together
that his faith might leave us both less afraid.

I’ve filled time capsules with memories
of Veterans I thought I couldn’t save.
Some of the ones who proved me wrong still write.

You can never feel too good about yourself
in this business, one teacher used to mutter.

I recite this mantra every day.

What do I know about doctoring?

I know that touch has a way
of calling you back to your body.

I’ve heard more than a hint of bitterness
in the widow’s voice.

I’ve seen that even a hospital room can let in sunlight
if you take the time to raise the shade.

The way a splash of cold milk
makes cereal sing.

The way the atmosphere shifts
when a soul breaks away.

Birdsong in the morning
when you’re the only one awake.

Driving home through empty streets.
Showing up, again, the next day, and the next.

Caring enough to repeat the same boring advice
about sodium and cigarettes.

Caring enough to make the dressing tidy
to keep the dressing clean.

The problem of inertia.

The work’s entrancing pace.

The imperative to be still
to be quiet as an old growth forest
which is not merely silent but inviting
an open-ended question answered
by the woodpecker’s knocking
wind through shaggy pines
the rushing stream, life.

What do I know about doctoring?

Nothing you don’t know yourself
from living your own life

from possessing a body
that can sense the world

that recoils from pain
that grows towards the light

a body that feels deeply, and through feeling
births the miracle of the mind

the belief in immortality
the endurance of faith

sparks of desire and creativity
reason’s sobriety

and the deepest human impulse
not to compete but to relate

to form connection

to witness and to be seen

to nurture our fragile community

and only by the grace
of loving kindness

survive