Viewpoint: Good doctors teach us about life

We are surrounded by mentors, but the ones who have had the most impact on my path to becoming a physician are the ones who taught me something other than just the traditional diagnosis and treatment side of medicine.

I recently spent a day at the Hospital for Sick Children to see a "whack of tonsils," as recommended by one of the paediatric otolaryngologists. There were six scheduled tonsil and adenoid surgeries, but after the fifth consecutive one, I was getting bored. I wandered into the residents' lounge for a coffee and found Dr Friedberg with his laptop. He spotted me and fired a question my way. "Have I shown you pictures of my cottage?"

I said "no" and spent the next half hour going through the last 10 years of his life outside of the hospital. There were pictures in the summer, with him and his wife wearing bathing suits, before and after they put in the removable dock for their boat. There were pictures in the winter, with a teenage boy on skis and, years later, with the same boy, now a father, with his own boy on skis. He told me about how an energy efficient design allowed him to get away with paying $300 (£150; €216) to heat the cottage year-round in unforgiving Canadian weather, while his neighbours were easily paying more than $3000 to accomplish the same feat.

This was not what I expected to learn in medical school but it made sense. Medicine is about people, patients, and healthcare professionals, and the people that matter to them. Dr Friedberg left clinic every Friday afternoon (or early evening) with a cheerful "I'm gone." He was going to the cottage.

A cynic might argue that physicians should be more selfless and dedicated to their patients but martyrdom is hardly what makes a good doctor. Dr Friedberg's devotion to his family and his protected time at the cottage makes him extremely empathic to the needs of his patients. He understands that you often have to treat the whole family, even when only one member is sick. He also knows that his clinical clerks and residents cannot operate to the best of their abilities when they are worn down or too narrowly focused on the medicine side of medicine. By prioritising his home life and encouraging his medical students to do the same, he ensures that we are all ready to come to work each Monday morning with the energy and the passion to make people well.

I entered medical school with the notion that to be great in medicine meant knowing all the facts and nuances of our art when, in fact, just staying human may be the greatest thing you can ever do for your patients.

Competing interests: None declared

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

       

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