This blog was first published on KevinMD as “can we truly heal another if we can’t heal ourselves.” ………………………………………………………………………………………………. “Liver Transplant Surgeon Addicted to Alcohol” – reads like a headline from a tabloid paper selling sensationalism. How could it be? How could a liver transplant surgeon, someone who sees up close and personal the devastating effects of alcohol on the body, be addicted to alcohol? Surely the diseased, fibrosed, hard, shrunken cirrhotic livers with dilated and engorged veins that can…
This blog was first published on KevinMD entitled “How do surgeons deal with their mistakes” and is re-published here as well. As surgeons we are privileged to have our hands work inside someone’s body with the intention of alleviating suffering, removing sources of pain, excising diseased organs, fixing this or that, ultimately to improve someone’s quality of life, prolong it or at times even save it. Yet we also know that people can suffer complications from surgery, that in some…
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Why Equality Legislature needs to Trump Discriminatory Religious Belief : the Gay Cake Case update
I previously blogged on the ‘gay cake case’ as it is known – whereby a bakery in N.Ireland, Ashers, refused to bake a cake with the words ‘support gay marriage’ on it because of their Christian beliefs. They lost the court case and the judge ruled they had discriminated against the consumer who was gay. Asher’s have decided to appeal the case, which starts this week. I read an interview with Daniel and Amy McArthur from Ashers bakery, in the…
The modern day world of medicine and science seems to revolve around this one word ‘evidence’. We have for example, evidenced-based medicine, evidence-based practice, best-evidence medical education, evidence guided education and the question – “what is the evidence for that?” dominates the worlds of academia, research and clinical practice. There is a faction within science and medicine that is purporting that no treatments or modalities should be available unless they are supported by ‘evidence’. This seems to be a reasonable and…
A recent paper in the BMJ1 reported on the fact that doctors take less sick leave than other healthcare professionals. Possible reasons for this include that doctors are maybe more healthy than the general population – they have discovered the secret of life and are keeping it all to themselves perhaps! Yet the figures for doctor health and wellbeing would not bear this out – given we have higher levels of addiction and suicide than the general population. The Practitoner…
Just a few weeks ago we witnessed the horrific killings in Paris by those affiliated with the group known as Islamic State. Apparently the murderers cried ‘Allahu Akbar’ meaning ‘God is great’ before slaughtering those in front of them as well as suiciding themselves. Whilst Islamic state is foremost in Western minds as a radical group of terrorists intent on killing those of a different religious persuasion as representatives of a Western world it perceives to be responsible for their…
This blog was first published on Action for NHS Wellbeing site on 6th September 2015. Resilience is currently very topical so I felt to share it here as well. ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Resilience is the latest buzz word and emotional resilience training is the new ‘must have’ for those who are trained to kill, fight and go to war as well as those who are trained to save lives, heal and care for sick. Indeed, based on the fact that the Army…
Over the last few days the hashtag #ILookLikeASurgeon has been trending on twitter and has sparked interest across the globe. It originated when a female engineer @IsisAnchalee was told she didn’t look like an engineer and started the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. This was followed by a female surgical resident Dr Heather Logghe suggesting that #ILookLikeASurgeon might be next and sure enough the twitter world responded. Female surgeons from America, UK, Australia, Europe and elsewhere posted their photo claiming that they ‘look…
How charitable is cold-calling? You may say, “what a ridiculous question, it’s obvious there is no charity in cold-calling”, yet we have seen this week how a number of large charities in the UK think it is appropriate to ‘cold-call’ people to raise money for their charities, including Oxfam, Save the Children, the British Red Cross, Macmillan and Cancer Research amongst others. They employ companies to do the dirty work – and dirty work it is indeed. Fundraisers were apparently…
In the past year a furore erupted in N.Ireland over a cake – Ascher’s bakery refused to bake a cake for a gay man in support of gay marriage on the basis it went against their conscience or perhaps more accurately their beliefs. Following on from this, N. Ireland politician Paul Givan has tabled a ‘conscience clause’, which if it was successful would give people the right to refuse admission to gay people in hotels, restaurants or to refuse to…
Yesterday Ireland became the first country in the world to legislate for same sex marriage based on the popular vote of the people. And the people of Ireland have spoken loud and clear and given a resounding YES to inclusivity, to acceptance, to equality and to love. The people of Ireland have listened to and been guided by the wisdom and love in their own hearts, rightly bypassing the doctrinal religious teachings that in the past would have been the…
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The Cake, the Christ and Christians – what’s really going on? A call for equality, freedom of conscience or homophobic religious discrimination?
N. Ireland is currently in the midst of a legal case that is set to be a landmark case between equality rights and religious beliefs. The case centres on a cake, one that Asher’s bakery refused to bake because the purchaser asked for the slogan “support gay marriage” to be on the top of the cake. The bakery initially accepted the order and took the payment, even though the person who took the order knew they would not agree to…
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Women in Surgery: Should we kneel down and open our mouths, lie back and close our eyes, or stand up and speak the Truth?
Dr Gabrielle McMullin, a senior vascular surgeon in Australia, has recently caused a stir by stating that women in surgery should stay quiet about sexual abuse, harassment or advances from male superiors if they wish to continue in a surgical career. She was commenting on a case of a female surgical trainee, Caroline Tan, who won her case for sexual harassment but could then not find employment in any public hospital in Australia. Dr McMullin said, “Her career was ruined…
After a few hours I had just completed an in depth blog post on this topic, replete with references and analysis when the whole thing disappeared from view to be replaced by a clean page!! Alas, I had not saved it along the way…lesson learned! And so I will submit here just a brief entry and perhaps return another day to flesh it out a bit more in another post! There have been many reports in the news this week…
Last night I watched this documentary by Peter Bach about the Sell-off of the NHS. It exposes the extensive corruption in political and government circles that is leading to the dismantling of the NHS step by step. The NHS provides cheaper, more cost-effective healthcare than the US with better results but the government persist with going down the route of the US model. You might ask why? Well it has nothing to do with patient care that’s for sure. But…
Many people think that emotions and feelings are just different words for the same thing – that we can use those words interchangeably. But what if emotions and feelings are not the same? What if there is a significant difference between them that has implications for our health and wellbeing? Would it not be helpful to know what the difference was? You bet it would! In order to explain the difference, let me explain a little more about the human…
It has been written since ancient times ‘that only love heals’. But what does that mean and how does love heal? Some might feel they are just words or platitudes with no real substance or meaning. Certainly when it comes to medical school training there is no mention of love – so is it just some out-dated notion of yester-year or does it still carry relevance in today’s modern scientific medicine? In modern medicine the word healing usually…
Many people associate looking after their body with pushing themselves hard in the gym – lifting heavy weights, doing lots of repetitions, running fast or using a cross trainer at full pelt. This is reinforced by the feel good factor that comes with a session in the gym and the adrenaline /endorphin rush. Of course it’s not just in the gym but there are many forms of exercise where we push the body as hard as possible. Not only that…
The word ‘medicine’, comes from the Latin ‘ars medicina’ and means the ‘art of the healing’. So what if medicine wasn’t just about pills, potions and surgeries but also included ‘the art of healing’ through living? So how do we heal through living? The Key Principles to Understand are that: every human being has an essence of love/stillness we live as if this essence does not exist or as if we are in separation to it and thus we have…
This article in the Guardian reports on the stoning of a pregnant 25 year old woman in Pakistan because she married a man she loved. She was stoned to death by her father, brothers and other relatives. The stoning murder took place outside a court! Her father described it as an ‘honour killing’ because she married without their consent. He also said he had no regrets. How twisted and distorted is it to consider such murder as an ‘honour killing’?…
In only two weeks, having gained much in the way of insight into self-care I have begun a process of adapting and trialing changes to my way of living. Some have already borne fruit whilst others will take more time and discipline. This reflection will outline the ways in which I have adapted my lifestyle to become more caring to myself and hopefully as a result, to others. Diet The first week focused on diet, sleep, exercise work and…
The module was the top of my list when I made my SSC choices because I always like to try a module that offers a different aspect of the medical course. I like to have a wide variety of knowledge and am always open to new ideas and I thought this module would offer me an insight into things I had not experienced before. In terms of my own self care I was interested to see how well I…
Amy Irvine – My Journey in Self-care Throughout this SSC, I have been mentally stimulated and challenged in ways that I have not been accustomed to with other modules in medical school. This has served as a pleasant change from the scientific nature of clinical based modules and I can honestly say that I have thoroughly enjoyed the module and the thought-provoking concepts that have been discussed. I initially ranked this SSC moderately high out of a combination of curiosity,…
Introduction I choose the self-care module this term as the title stood out among all the ‘usual’ module choices. While reading the abstract for the module the keywords ‘body awareness’, ‘holistic health’ and emotions/feelings’ struck a chord with me as I have always strived to understand more about myself and feel that self-care is something I could always improve on. During the introduction day I defined self-care as ‘feeling good about oneself’, ‘relieving stress, worries and anxiety’ and ‘having a…
Before starting the self-care SSC I had delved a little into the world of Buddhism, under the thinking that learning to meditate would bring me peace and direction as I was finding myself regularly frustrated and at a loss to what I was making of my life. I had only read in fits and starts and hadn’t given any real commitment to the idea. I therefore saw the self-care SSC as a chance to spring-board myself further into the…
During the first three weeks of January I ran an SSC (student selected component) called “Self-care for Medical Students” for third year students. We are seeing unprecedented rates of burnout in the medical profession and the rates of addiction and suicide are higher than for the general population. Clearly something is amiss when those who are supposed to know about healthcare and wellbeing are in some ways worse off than those they are caring for. The culture of medicine is…
I have witnessed many changes within medicine over the last 20 years – one of which has been the increasing fragmentation of medicine despite the introduction of the importance of holistic medicine. This fragmentation is across the board and exists on many levels. Fragmentation by Specialising As our knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, pathophysiology, pharmacology and the many varieties of illness and disease has expanded, it was recognised that it was not feasible for all doctors to be expert…
This article in the BBC News comments on the pledge by food manufacturers to cut saturated fat levels. A public health expert has rightly called it a ‘drop in the ocean’ in the fight against obesity. Prof Ashton, President of the faculty of Public Health says the approach lacks credibility and that food manufacturers need to also address the levels of sugar and salt used in foods where they lower the fat content. Whilst there are healthy and unhealthy types…
This week has seen two reports of children being blamed for the abuse they received. First, in this case, a barrister accused a 13 year old girl of being “predatory” and “sexually experienced.” The man that she was apparently predatory with was 41 years of age. In the second case we have Eddy Shah claiming that underage girls can be “to blame” for the abuse they experience. He makes a distinction between young girls who go out to have a…
I recently wrote this blog for the Natural Therapies NI website and felt to share it here too. The word esoteric just means ‘from within’ or ‘innermost’. Thus esoteric healing is about healing from within, from one’s innermost. It is about coming to know, understand, experience and feel for ourselves what this innermost is and how we can then make daily choices from that place, which are healthy for us. The innermost essence of everyone is pure Love; it is…