Aysha Inankur, MD
Entering Practice: Reflections from a Mentee
Each year you help to sponsor medical students who are willing to come to the annual AMEN Conference. Here is your chance to catch up with one of those students who was sponsored to the very first annual AMEN Conference, which was in 2005.
Aysha Inankur caught the vision for medical ministry quite young. After attending a seminar by Dr. Hans Diehl at The Black Hills Health and Education Center, her parents switched to a plant-based diet when she was about ten years old. Her father lost twenty pounds and decreased his risk of coronary heart disease significantly.
After that, Aysha remembers attending many community health-education classes put on by physicians at her church. Later on, she attended Weimar Academy, where she had the opportunity to interact with patients whose insulin dependence was reduced or eliminated.
The testimonies of patients who regained physical strength and spiritual clarity during the two weeks they spent at Weimar deepened Aysha’s desire to become a physician.
“I chose endocrinology,” she said, “because I was interested in lifestyle education, and wanted to focus on diseases which were particularly amenable to lifestyle change. At least 60% of my patients have diabetes mellitus. I get to talk with patients all day about the impact that healthy eating, physical activity, and adequate sleep have on insulin resistance.”
Her first exposure to AMEN came when she was sponsored to the first annual AMEN conference.
“As a fourth-year medical student,” she said, “I was still considering several specialties. At the Conference, I met physicians in some of the specialties I was thinking about. These physicians told how they were serving Christ through their practices, and it was reassuring to hear how God was using people in several different fields of medicine. This took the pressure off me because I realized I did not have to find the ‘perfect’ specialty on my own. My faith grasped the concept that God could lead me to a field that fit me well, just as He had guided the physicians I met at the conference.”
She has been very thankful for AMEN since then too because it has helped her learn how to incorporate ministry into her practice. These ideas have, she said, “guided my choice of magazines for the waiting room, style of office-based health education, and the way I ask patients if they want me to pray for them.”
For instance, one of her favorite magazines is Vibrant Life. The issue called “Diabesity” is especially popular as patients often ask if they can take a copy home. The material in the waiting room is a spring-board from which patients will ask questions.
“Often they tell me,” she says, “what they learned from the book or magazine. It may be a spiritual idea or some nutritional education. Either way, I can simply reaffirm what they have stated.”
Another way AMEN influenced her practice was when she learned that one member was sharing recipes in his office, and that inspired Dr. Inankur to host once-a-month nutrition class. Topics ranged from how to eat healthfully on a budget, to how to eat more fiber from whole plant foods. A health educator employed by the hospital would lecture for an hour. Then Dr. Inankur distributed recipes, demonstrated one or two of them, and served a light meal. The meal offered a chance to pray not only for the food, but for the guests as they made lifestyle changes. One of the patients perceived the spiritual motivation for the classes and asked her: “Why do you hold these classes when you’re not getting paid for them?” He then answered his own question. “You’re doing it for the least of these.”
“All I could say was, ‘Yes, I care about your health because God cares.’”
AMEN has shown her too, she said, practical ways to initiate spiritual conversations with patients. One of the most helpful lines she learned from an AMEN member is: “Some of my patients like for me to say a prayer for their health. Would you like for me to pray for you?”
As with most physicians, many of Dr. Inankur’s patients desire healthful lifestyle habits, but tell her it is hard to maintain these practices long-term. In this setting, they welcome prayer for wisdom to adjust their lifestyles and strength to follow their resolves. A patient recently noted her need to lose weight to lower her blood sugars. When she followed up 6 months later, she had lost 13 lbs. and her hemoglobin A1c was 6.5. The patient said, “God helped me, and I think the prayer we said last time made a difference.”
Says Dr. Inankur: “Promises I claim for patients include James 1:5, 2 Corinthians 12:9, and Philippians 4:13. I frequently close by thanking Christ for being our Great Physician. Often patients will have tears in their eyes after we pray, and some will respond by praying for me. Hearing my name lifted up to God reinforces my understanding of the privilege of being prayed for and motivates me to offer to pray with more patients.”
She doesn’t always find it easy to pray with her patients, and could feel intimidated when patients say that they don’t want her praying for them. But she can recount numerous times when it has been a blessing both to her and to the patients when she does pray with them.
A turning point in her life, she said, was the 2005 AMEN Conference, which taught “me to connect with likeminded health professionals. This first year in practice has shown me how indebted I am to AMEN members who inspire me to work for both the physical and the spiritual betterment of my patients.”
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