“While I had hoped to do more to help our nation tackle its biggest health challenges, I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have served,” Dr. Murthy said on Facebook.
During his tenure and travels, from “a remote fishing village in Alaska, a church in Alabama, an American Indian reservation in Oklahoma, [to] a school in Virginia,” Dr. Murthy picked up a few lessons he plans to carry beyond his service as surgeon general, he wrote in the Facebook post.
Those lessons included:
1. Kindness is a source of strength.
2. The key to addressing addiction is to recognize the humanity in others.
3. Healing requires good communication and listening with an open mind.
4. Choose love over fear. “It is the world’s oldest medicine. It is what we need to build a nation that is safe and strong for us and our children,” he wrote.
Dr. Murthy handed over the role Friday to his deputy, Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams, PhD, RN. “[K]now that our nation is in capable and compassionate hands,” he wrote.
Read the full post here.
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