In medical school, professors taught him that if a doctor touched the human heart that it would stop. However, after experimenting with dogs and Novocain, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles found that wasn't true.

When he first started practicing medicine there was no such field as open-heart surgery. One of the pioneers of the open-heart surgery, Elder Nelson told students how to learn to balance their career and family.

As an invited speaker of the Pre-Med Club Thursday night, Elder Nelson approached the audience that filled the Varsity Theatre without a planned talk and offered to answer any questions that the students had.

How he balanced being a scientist, going to medical school and making time for a family and a calling was the first question asked. A common reaction that pre-med students receive when they talk about their future plans is that medical school means divorce because of the time commitment involved.

"Marry well," Elder Nelson said. "Pick a good wife, one who loves the Lord and you second. If she loves him first, she will have more capacity to love you."

He then said no matter what the occupation, trying to find a balance between work and family is never over. He then told the students that they have a responsibility to their families to do their work well because they must earn a living. Most men can't earn a living in the home and so must leave it in order to provide for their families.

The balance between a career and a family can be compared to an airplane, he said. One wing of the airplane is the family, the other wing an occupation. When both wings are tightly fastened to the fuselage, things will work better. The body of the airplane represented the gospel because it held everything together.

"The great deliverer of time is to have the truths of the gospel firmly fixed in your mind," Elder Nelson said.

Quoting Matthew 6:36, he told students to keep in mind where they are going and what their objectives are. In applying this scripture to his personal life, Elder Nelson said he always accepted callings and tried to do that calling well.

Working with those who do not share the same beliefs can be difficult, said another student who wanted to know how Elder Nelson handled this aspect of his career.

In response, Elder Nelson related a story of a senior resident in an operating room who lost control of his emotions and threw a contaminated knife into Elder Nelson's flesh.

"Always be in control of your emotions," he said. "You can't control other people's behavior, but you can control your own."

Dividing the process of becoming a practicing physician into two different phases, he told students that right now and until they are done with their residency they are in the high hurdle phase of life. During this phase they are required to meet the expectations of others. For Elder Nelson, this phase lasted through 12.5 years and five children, from when he got his medical degree to when he sent his first bill for surgical services.

The second phase is when each person is responsible for living up to their own expectations and living by their own set of ethics because they no longer have to meet other's expectations He said it is important to hold standards high and make sure they are never lowered.

The concern about the high rate of divorces in medicine led Elder Nelson to tell the students what their ultimate objective should be.

"Your ultimate objective is not what you are to do in your life but what you will be in life," he said. "This is where your focus must be. I don't think the Lord will care very much about how many operations you did or how many babies you delivered. He will ask you how you treated your wife and if you taught your children."

He then told students to learn the virtues of faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility and diligence found in Doctrine and Covenants 4:6.

"You don't learn those things in medical school or pharmacy or dental school," he said. "You learn them from the gospel."

Using his lifetime of experience in the medical field and as a father in the home, Elder Nelson then told students to understand that at this time of their lives they are rightly focused on their careers but cautioned them to not let it take over their lives.

"I want you to know that your career will come to a close and all you will have left is what you are," he said.

Ignorance of the scriptures delayed the progress in medicine for a long time, Elder Nelson said. He then read from Leviticus 15 about the necessity of cleanliness when dealing with a sick person. The principles in that book, one of the most ancient in the world, are the basic reasoning behind modern sterile technologies; it was there all of those hundreds of years before modern medical discoveries.

For the final portion of his address, Elder Nelson gave the students four points to develop. He told them to love because the Lord loves and in medicine that means to care for the patients, no matter what they learn in medical school. He said to focus on the ordinances of the gospel as the Lord did and to gain knowledge because divine truth is incontrovertible. Lastly, he told the students to endure to the end.

When Elder Nelson was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984, he said he asked President Hinckley what to do about his commitments that he had already made to his patients. He was told to honor any commitments, just not to make any more.

The Pre-Med Club members who attended the address were relieved that he had answered some of their main concerns about going into the field of medicine.

"I think everyone had the same question - how can someone balance family and religious time in medical school?" said David Jenkins a sophomore from Nampa, Idaho, majoring in microbiology. "He's a good example of that because he was extremely successful. He said that you just have to sometimes work hard and spend some time away from your family, but later in your life it will pay off."

It won't get any easier to focus on the spiritual things, so students need to learn how to do that now, was the main message for Jeremy Bramwell, president of the Pre-Med Club and a senior from Seattle majoring in physiology and developmental biology.

"I feel like I live out of my planner just checking things off," Bramwell said. "We can prepare now to focus on what we want to be, not what we want to do."

Copyright Brigham Young University 21 Feb 2008