ABSTRACT
Surgery is a highly charged and strenuous profession where life and death are frequently encountered under difficult circumstances. Patients are transported to a state of unconsciousness in the performance of the surgical act, and occasionally irreversibility of cure is a fact. Some patients may not return to their beds or for merly active lives. Within these circumstances, it is important that surgeons remain actively involved in finding meaning in their profession, in their lives, or as Frankl accurately put it:
We must never forget that we may also fin d meaning in life even when con fronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that can not be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.1
