In medicine we are taught to think and live life from our heads.

We are taught facts and figures, and we are taught to be rational.

We are taught to approach things logically, from our heads, and we learn to relate to people from our heads.

We are perpetually analysing data, from our heads, and we end up talking from our heads.

There is a focus on mental acuity, mental strength and mental perspicacity.

But given that medicine is people and people love and care from their hearts, then where is the focus on connecting with people from our hearts?

We all know deep within that love and care for people is the foundation of medicine and healthcare. Its absolute bedrock.

When we are ill, we do not crave our mothers or fathers to speak to us with mental acuity, or to rattle off facts to us about the latest studies. We seek to be met with their hearts, with love and care. And deep down this is what we all seek. To be loved and to be and to feel cared for.

Given that medicine is about people, and at our core we all seek to be loved and to feel cared for, and this is a vital part of healing and feeling well – then why do we not make this a focus in medicine?

Where did the heart of medicine go?

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The latest buzz word in health care is to make it ‘personalised’. This word I have noticed is used interchangeably with ‘precision’ medicine. Precision medicine is where drugs are ideally chosen to be used dependent on the genetic profile of each person. But this is hardly personalised! It may be precise, but it is definitely not the definition of personal.

When I consider the term ‘personal’, I consider the person and what it is to be a person.

There is far more to our make up as people than our genetic makeup! We are whole people with feelings, thoughts, sensitivities, dreams, aspirations, relationships, jobs, families, children and a whole host of assorted issues and personalities. There is far more to being a person than our genetics, our gender, and our anatomic arrangements!

Making something personal, means that we are cared for as a whole, that our uniqueness is taken into consideration, and that treatments are tailored for us as a person. As a whole person, not just a set of genes, organs and blood tests.

The notion of personalised means that things become exactly that. Personal. Where you connect with and develop a relationship with your doctor or other health care provider. Where you and your practitioner are seen and respected for the people that you are. Continue reading →

If you go to any health care conference all around you, you will see a bunch of very serious professionals. Dedicated to their cause, they are taking it very seriously. It is rare to see anyone laughing, and conversations about health care and research matters are taken very seriously. People get upset about things, and they express their hurts, and sometimes, people storm out of meetings. It can be intense!

It is the same on hospital wards and in consulting rooms. Doctors as a rule are a very serious group of people. We are trained to be that way. You need to look serious to be taken seriously, or so we learn.

But what kind of a way is this to live life?

In all seriousness (yes, yes, pun intended ;)) why can we not have fun at work?

Why can we not have fun and enjoy ourselves when we discuss things?

Does it all have to be SO serious and intense?

Do we have to look serious and intense to show that we are paying serious attention to things? To show that we care?!

I wonder,

What might happen if we kept things light?

What might happen if we saw the lighter side of things when things didn’t seem quite right to us in a discussion about a certain matter?

And what if we kept things light when somebody dared to disagree with our point of view, in public of all things! As everyone knows in academia, differing opinions can be the start of a very intense exchange…

Yet, when we are born and we are small, we know how to enjoy life. We know how to laugh, and how to enjoy ourselves. It’s usually not a disaster if we fall over and make our bottom a little bit wet……. Small children naturally laugh with each other, unless they have been traumatised…

Is this perhaps what happens to us in the medical profession?

I wonder, do we perhaps become traumatised through the way that we are educated and trained, and through our professional experiences and use being ‘serious’ as a coping mechanism?

Is this perhaps one of our modes of defence and protection from trauma, our serious faces projecting out against the traumas of the world, both actual and perceived?

And what do we think our professional seriousness will prevent… Continue reading →

In Medicine we spend a lot of time learning about facts figures and statistics. We learn about guidelines, the Krebs cycle, the different types of renal tubular acidosis and the right drugs to prescribe under the right circumstances. We learn about the correct procedures and how to do good operations.

All of these things are vital and important in medicine, as if we do not get this stuff right, things go wrong for people.

But, are these things where our true power lies as physicians?

Much of what we learn is about function. It is about getting protocols right and following procedures. But these are all impersonal things.

What about the personal? Is that important?

After all, Medicine is fundamentally about people. It has care for people at its heart.

And as people, what is it that we seek when we are ill?

We naturally seek a true care. And not only care, we actually want to feel loved. Continue reading →

When we think of the word ‘resilience’ it conjures up certain meanings. ie that no matter what is thrown at you, you can ‘handle it’. That you are tough enough to take it all on, and carry on.

Increasingly there are moves to train our doctors to be more ‘resilient’ to life, but is this really what is needed?

Burnout rates in the profession are utterly staggering. Over half of the medical profession. That is correct, over half of the medical profession are burnt out. 25% of the profession have thought of killing themselves at any one point in life. That’s right. A quarter of health care professionals, those trained to be our experts in health care have found life so miserable that their only way out has been to contemplate suicide.

Our suicide rates are far higher than any other section of society, the irony not being lost here as we are health care professionals.

The levels of bullying and harassment in our profession are rife, and increasingly doctors are beginning to speak up about the stresses and strains that they are under, and in the UK in particular, they are walking off the job to move to other countries where they feel more valued.

It is clear that as a profession our health and well-being is suffering. But is aiming for increased ‘resilience’ really the answer?

The sort of people who do medical school are by nature pretty ‘resilient’. They push themselves, deny themselves all sorts of things, in order to not only get the marks required for medical school but increasingly the vast array of extra-curricular activities that are required to demonstrate and prove that one is a suitably exceptional candidate.

Circumstances in medicine are certainly arduous.…..long hours of work, study for years on end, seeing people at their worst, a well established culture of bullying and harassment….Nobody ‘survives’ unless they have a degree of ‘resilience’ to human suffering, both their own, and others 😉

As doctors, we care deeply about people and innately and through our programming in medical school we want to take away human suffering. We see it as being a bad thing. Yet we quickly realise that the time that we have and the tools that we have in our medical armamentarium are not sufficient, and are woefully inadequate in comparison to the immensity of the human suffering that we are confronted with.

There is much to process in day to day life, in conjunction with the multitude of pressures, to do with time management, clinic hours, paperwork, and on top of that our life and family demands.

Many of us burnout and there are many things that people are pointing the finger to that are causing burnout.

Some people say its long hours, but its clearly not that, as many people work long hours with no burnout. There are clearly other factors at play and we are certainly affected by and react to the toxicity of the environments that we find ourselves in.

But is ‘resilience’ really what we need and what we truly want our doctor to be? Continue reading →

As doctors we spend all of our time learning to care for others.

Our entire education is spent learning all of the latest facts and figures and protocols so that we can provide the best possible health care for others. But in all of that, do we take the time to truly and deeply take care of ourselves? And if not, why not?!

Burnout rates in medicine are 40-55%. This is not just something to be a teeny little bit concerned about in the medical profession. This is a global pandemic! It is affecting literally more than half of the medical profession, globally.

It would seem in fact, that as doctors, everywhere, that we are not very good at taking care of ourselves.

In fact, our culture promotes the opposite.

Our culture is about celebrating how tired we are, celebrating how much we can push ourselves beyond our limits. We celebrate and encourage black and dark humour which distances us from people. We celebrate sleep deprivation and long and hard work hours.  We decry sensitivity and feelings and distance ourselves from those inconvenient human sorts of things as much as possible and if we feel them we Never. Ever. Let on. that we are affected by things. Continue reading →

At a medical conference, for doctors, at the end of last year, we were informed in one talk that:

1. Doctors don’t like treating patients
2. They don’t have time for it
3. They don’t do it well, and not only that
4. They are not interested in doing it well

Needless to say as a person who loves medicine and people I was somewhat stunned (and I must confess, moderately incensed!) to be told from the pulpit so to speak, how I do and feel about my job from someone who has never met me or spent time in my clinic. And I am not alone in this response and feeling given the conversations I had with others who were in the same room as me when this invective was unleashed.

I heartily disagree with the statements that were presented to us. I personally feel they are coming from a burnt out jaded perspective, from someone who has given up on medicine and people in medicine. But this is not the first time I have been apprised of such attitudes in medicine. I have read papers that have said that doctors ought to have their attention focused on diagnosis only, rather than the day to day treatment of patients. And I have had conversations with peers who also feel that is where we need to have our attentions focused. Some people are proposing that doctors ought to ‘just diagnose’ and ‘other people’ ought to do the treating, following protocols, such as nurses.

It concerns me deeply to hear such perspectives gaining momentum and I am concerned for the future of health care and medicine.

Medicine is about people.

People are the heart of medicine. Continue reading →