Rebecca Quinn is a GP in busy Battersea in London. She is part of a thriving practice where she is surrounded by a host of inspiring colleagues for whom good patient care is a shared language, a craft, and (mostly!) a joy.
In the interests of CPD, I have been delving into the newer strands that we general practitioners are invited to weave into our practice and teaching. In our quest for the honing of our healing, it is striking how far we have travelled from our starting blocks of traditional science. I wrote this poem tongue-in-cheek in the hope that we can reflect on not losing the foundations of medicine, but also hold with conviction the new tools that we have been given with which to help and to heal.
Systems update
Run your finger down the bright slim spines in our modern library of healing.
Tut tut : you are old, the young ones say. Apparently
our anatomy needs rearranging, our biochemistry updating,
and our physiology is simply inadequate. Today’s bright new horizons beckon.
Seize your meteor from the current shower:
Functional medicine
Lifestyle medicine
Narrative Medicine
All arch a veritable rainbow over the old landscape of simply plodding on.
Grasp a parachute out of the burning machinery and endless grind
Of industry. Exit a world where the battle between outcome and Sandra stopping her statins
Becomes an indignant red dot on your computer screen that refuses to be reasoned with.
Observe from the bunker of the hunkered down, and consider.
Yes, friends, we are old. We need our rainbow. We need our road to liberation
and a dusty amnesty. Let us follow this new star,
but with our craft concealed in musty sleeves, the lectures of years around our necks
for comfort. And you never know, they may not quite be gold, frankincense or myrrh
but I’ll wager this; they will come in handy one day.
For sure.
Featured Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
