I am lucky to be in a job where I am surrounded by seniors. By people who are in the role I could be working if I followed their career path. They help give you a tangible visualisation of your potential future. Sometimes this is helpful and inspiring, sometimes it is the opposite and makes you question everything. The inspirers seem to be increasingly rare in my day-to-day job. Maybe this is because of the overworked NHS staff, the impossible goals governance teams set them and the ever-changing nature of work resulting in constant adaptations to new pathways and technology. Maybe my threshold for inspirers has increased. Maybe inspirers are simply rare.
Rather than coming across a recent inspiring mentor, I came across an inspiring doctor speaking on a podcast, Dr Guy Leschziner, a neurologist specialising in sleep disorders among other things. The way he spoke about patients and the art of practising medicine made me believe again. It brought out a desire in me to aspire. I want to take such an interest in my patients’ lives and learn from them, sharing my reflections with the world in a non-judgmental manner. This approach was my key takeaway from how Guy spoke – to treat people with kindness, empathy and curiosity. His explanation about the uniqueness of everyone’s experiences coupled with everyone’s unique brain structures and neurone patterns resulting in everyone’s perceptions of the worlds being unique was nothing new per se, but it was refreshing to hear. This is how doctors should be, rather than taking a binary or black-and-white approach to doing ‘the right things’. I often feel like people should be given more credit for living their lives.
I would love to be an inspirer myself one day. I hope I have the remaining energy to do so.
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