In the legend of quest for the Holy Grail, soon after leaving King Arthur’s court, the young knight seeking the grail finds himself riding through a wasteland towards a castle. Different stories have Percival or Galahad or Gawain, surrounded by withered fields. Nothing grows, and even the birds are silenced. As he nears the castle, he sees a man fishing… Read More »The holy grail of patient care
In the literature on medical errors there is a concept called the “Swiss Cheese Effect.” This happens in real life, too. Accidents happen when all the little precautions we use to keep ourselves safe fail and we literally slip through the cracks. Almost three weeks ago I was on my way down the stairs to drive to my osteopath for… Read More »Slipping
My first experience using translators in Medicine happened when I was a feckless medical student doing an intake interview and examination for a couple at an infertility clinic. The couple were recent immigrants from an Asian country and they brought the husband’s sister along to translate. You can imagine how uncomfortable and awkward that was. The questions in an infertility… Read More »All talk and no comprehension
Attitudes towards gender and sexual diversity have changed tremendously over the course of my medical career. When I began in medicine most of the gay people at McGill were very discreet. My LGBT+ classmates lived in fear of being outed, knowing it could lead to them being shunned, mistreated or even failed. A prominent physician, who recently publicly thanked his… Read More »The lifelong quest to stay relevant . . . and respectful
I am preparing to give a faculty development talk in Toronto next week. So I have been thinking a lot about giving effective feedback to learners, while sitting on the couch as Dave watches the U.S. open tennis tournament. I am watching distractedly in my ADHD way, intermittently riveted by the young American tennis phenomenon Coco Gauff. There is a… Read More »Lessons on medical education from the tennis court
There is something so magical about being a family doctor. Now that I am in the twilight of my career and no longer really have the continuity of care practice that I had for so many years, I relish the opportunities I do have to be that small but important bit player in people’s lives. I have known Suzanne Bruneau… Read More »Ethel Bruneau – An elegy to a dance legend
“The next time you see me, I will be a Grandpapa” says Gilles as he picks the plumpest round of Rochetta cheese out of the fridge for me. He has been waiting for his daughter giving birth with growing excitement for months, and now that her due date is imminent, his mixture of joy and anxiety is palpable. I’ve been… Read More »The next time you see me, I will be a Grandpapa
As I sit indoors, babysitting a rambunctious toddler, confined to the house because we seem to be facing all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and many of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, I reflect on the phenomenon of what I call “Geezering.” This is the tendency for those of a certain age to believe things were so much better in… Read More »The problem with ‘geezering’
When I was a young hippie back in the early ’70s, I used to read tarot cards. Honestly, even then I was skeptical of the cards’ prognostic abilities. Still, I did love the images and the way universal experiences were expressed in the random patterns of the card spreads. I was good at it, too. People would exclaim with wonder… Read More »The hero’s journey
The word “gossip” comes from “God-Sisters” which were traditionally the friends who were close enough to a woman to attend her in childbirth. In those days before the Industrial Revolution when a woman went into labour, all her gossips would descend on her home. Clean the house, cook some food, care for the older children, and help support the woman… Read More »Gossip and the art of storytelling