Tag: medicine

I attended a function last night in the town where I live and work, at which we hosted our young doctors and talked to them about life as a...

What do we mean when we say that medicine is a ‘calling’? And what implications does that have for the way we practice medicine and the way we live our lives?

Medicine is an apprenticeship system and like all such systems, works best if the masters train their apprentices not just in a functional way, but with a deep level of care, as people and as colleagues. We now call this process mentoring.

Medicine is all about relationships. It is about caring for people, after all. So why do we place so little focus on this vital element of our profession?

One dimension of my daily work that I really enjoy is interviewing applicants to medical school. I’m often tasked with interviewing a specific group of applicants, the ones who openly write that they have suffered from mental health symptoms in the past.

Would a return to an ‘innermost’ way of life, a heart-centred intelligence and awareness, be something we as physicians, could consider?

These moments have taught me to become adaptable and go with the flow. My own solid rhythm is paramount these days, otherwise disappointment and frustration come knocking. Trust me, I have tried to control it and wanted it to be another way and it doesn’t work.

Let’s be honest, as doctors and health professionals we learn to live with anxiety in the body. Not all at once perhaps, but by degrees.

We are each and every one of us a lighthouse, designed to shine bright and light the way for others. It is for us to let that light out and shine in full, reminding everyone we meet that they too are that light, for this light lives inside us all, and we are all here to shine and light the way home together.

I have come to medicine later in life.  I was 32 when the impulse to study medicine came, 34 when I sat the entrance exam, and 35 when I...