Reaching out
BMJ 2005; 331 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0511434 (Published 01 November 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;331:0511434
- Peter MacPherson, intern1
- 1WHO Regional Office for Europe, Disaster Preparedness and Response Programme, Copenhagen
Call me an idealist. You can even say that I'm naïve. Maybe by now you've realised that medicine is about survival. Your survival through countless ward rounds, the survival of your friends and classmates during another exam period, and ultimately, the impossibly hoped for survival of the patients you meet on the wards.
Second thoughts
During medical school, I began to realise that this constant struggle for survival was vastly different from what I had imagined for my life within medicine. Didn't I study medicine to help people and cure disease? It wasn't that I didn't enjoy learning the anatomy of the brainstem, but surreptitious thoughts kept sneaking into my head, saying what was the point in learning this when there are millions of people dying from diarrhoea and pneumonia throughout the world? Lecturers, of course, never told us how many people were dying of diarrhoea, preferring instead to ramble on about the importance of sodium channels.
Need for a change
On starting work as a medical house officer, this unsettling feeling grew stronger. I quickly realised that being a successful PRHO (preregistration house officer) involved patching people up as best as possible and helping them organise their life so that their next admission could be averted, or at least delayed. While working as a surgical house officer, it seemed like the majority of my nights were spent sewing up cuts in drunken people's heads. Throughout my PRHO year, my overriding feeling was of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Preventing disease was surely much more worthwhile than trying to deal with the consequences, wasn't it? And there were areas of the world where running …
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