Credos of Our Calling – Individual Responsibility

The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) has long revered the valued credo of individual (personal) responsibility, for indeed, “responsibility is the price of greatness.” Essential to a balanced and just society, the code of individual responsibility forms the wellspring from which arise all rightly attained aspirations and accomplishments.

LECOM understands and teaches a comprehensive unity of mind, body, and spirit underpinned by a firm and unremitting commitment to personal responsibility. Indeed, the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life outcomes is the source from which emerges self-respect. The abilities resulting from that unity of mind, body, and spirit comprise the solidly formed strength of a personally responsible individual who, in turn, possesses the aptitude and desire to contribute positively to the betterment of society. A philosophy shared by educators and medical practitioners alike, each understands that as one forms one’s habits, those habits form the individual.

For this reason, it can be said that nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience as does personal responsibility. Although it may appear an easy path to avoid one’s responsibilities, one cannot escape the consequences of avoiding those responsibilities. For no person has, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

All too frequently in this age of modernity, the gift of personal responsibility often is abdicated to others to excuse or to free the individual from the consequence. Yet, all medical professionals understand that personal responsibility is an attendant and obligatory aspect of a noble calling. Such is the weighty burden of a prodigious and profound undertaking. To be sure, LECOM encourages personal responsibility, for it is the hallmark of attainment and the charge of a grand profession.

People who value the tenet of personal responsibility are better prepared to meet challenges with a calm and courageous heart. They are more proactive in addressing and remedying difficulties and they are more fully equipped to overcome obstacles.

Individual responsibility functions in tandem with capacity and accomplishment, for action emanates not merely from thought, but from a readiness to accept responsibility.

The diligent scholars at LECOM have shown consistently that responsibilities gravitate to the person who best can shoulder them. One owes very little to the condition in which one is born, for as generations of Americans have demonstrated, a person becomes that which he makes of himself. If one holds oneself to the highest standard, there arises therefrom the strength to impose one’s own terms upon life. The greatest gifts that one may pass to one’s progeny are the roots of responsibility, for from them spring the branches of independence.

From the realization that one’s own decisions cause one’s own consequences, comes wisdom and maturity. In all arenas of life, from medicine to ministry, from military to community leadership, the commitment to personal responsibility has given rise to instruct the single quality that all successful people share – that of individual responsibility.

The LECOM founders have long recognized personal responsibility as an indispensable attribute, one rooted in self-determination, upon painstaking attention to detail, and upon confidence. It is a component of all aspects of a medical, dental, or pharmacy calling. That personal responsibility, which corrects the eagerness of selfgratifying passions, which fortifies the spirit with independence of self over dependence upon another, which overcomes the inclination to make excuses, and which enlightens the mind with the power of useful knowledge – is of more value to accomplishment than are all of the provisions that derive from circumventing the challenge.

Winston Churchill

For these reasons, Individual Responsibility is a Credo of our Calling.