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Advancing Quality of Care at the End of Life A Hippocratic Oath for Our Time Current & Choice: "Physician, Heal Thy Sisters" Reporter Staff: Rachel Muir, Managing Editor |
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Sr. Mary Diana Dreger, M.D., is the first nun to graduate from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. |
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“Convent life is extremely important to me,” explains Sr. Mary Diana, now 39, who has retained her residence at St. Cecilia’s throughout medical school and will continue to do so during her residency. “Perhaps one of the most difficult things for me in terms of medical school and residency is that I can’t fully participate in the daily schedule that my sisters keep because of the obligations I have at the hospital,” she explains in one of her rare free moments. “Nevertheless, I try to fulfill as many of my religious obligations as I can. If that means getting up out of a nap when I’m still exhausted, I’ll do it. It’s important to me to be with my sisters.”
At times, Sr. Mary Diana’s sisters did not see very much of her during her four years of medical school. The St. Cecilia Congregation of Dominican Sisters lead a quiet, contemplative life, marked by daily Masses, communal prayers chanted three times daily, and scheduled times for silent prayer. The community operates elementary schools, high schools, and colleges in seven states, where they educate young women in the tradition of the Catholic church.
It was the Dominican emphasis on education that drew Sr. Mary Diana to the convent in 1989. On a premed course at Cornell University when she began college, Sr. Mary Diana, unsure she wanted to endure the rigorous path required to become a physician, abandoned her original medical school aspirations to follow another calling — teaching. She spent six years teaching biology and chemistry to high school students in New York City before moving to Nashville. Once at the convent, she resumed her teaching for eight more years, moving up to chair the science department at a Dominican high school.
When her religious superiors decided that it would be worth investing in the medical education of one of their own to ensure the future well-being of the growing convent community, Sr. Mary Diana was an obvious choice. “I was pretty surprised,” recalls the nun, who had assumed she would continue her successful teaching career. “But I thought and prayed about it and decided to apply to Vanderbilt.”
Sr. Mary Diana explains that as a highly self-sufficient community, St. Cecilia’s strives to provide for its own needs as much as possible. She notes that one of her sisters is a lawyer and several are nurses. “Technically, we don’t need an in-house physician,” explains the new resident. “But we are a community that is growing. We have several young sisters joining us, and I expect our current number of 180 nuns to rise to 200 by the time I finish my residency.”
She adds that growing medical costs were also a factor in the convent’s offer to send her to medical school. “Within the past few years, all of the sisters have acquired health insurance, which is incredibly costly,” she says. “Having in-house health care will help control those costs. In the past, many physicians were willing to provide their services for free. But the current health care system is making it more difficult for them to do that.”
Sr. Mary Diana retained her full-length white Dominican habit and veil throughout medical school and wears it now as a resident. Immediately identifiable as a nun to her patients, she receives “lots of different reactions” when they realize that she is also their physician. “By and large, people respond very positively,” she affirms. “I’ve had many patients and family members openly share their fears and concerns and ask me to pray for them. Several people have said that they perceive me as a person who can care for them both bodily and spiritually, even if we don’t share the same faith. I feel that’s a very special blessing.”
Nevertheless, she says that sometimes she must make it clear to certain patients — particularly those who want to debate the finer points of Catholicism with her — that she is at the hospital as a member of the medical personnel, not to engage them in conversations about faith. She also points out that a doctor doesn’t have to be a member of a religious order to minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of his or her patients. “I feel privileged to know many physicians who do a wonderful job of tending to both the bodies and souls of those in their care,” she says.
The physician-nun admits that her dual role has landed her in several humorous situations. She recalls one incident in which she had to evaluate a man seeking help for his alcohol addiction. After a pleasant 45-minute conversation with him, Sr. Mary Diana left the room to write up her report. The man later reported to an attending nurse that in his most recent alcohol-induced hallucination, he had spoken at length with a kindly nun.
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