Making a Good Doctor: Sources of Strength and Wisdom

‘Doctors will love this book. It speaks to them in profoundly personal ways, and also in stimulating intellectual ways [and] full of source material to help doctors and educators shape a better world in medicine.’ – Moira Stewart, PhD, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Centre for Studies in Family Medicine, Western University, Canada

What does it mean to be a good doctor? How do we learn to respond well to suffering—both our patients’ and our own—and to sustain ourselves in systems that so often undermine those very values we must hold on to?

In this anthology a group of physicians from five countries—ranging from newly qualified doctors to internationally recognized scholars—come together to reflect on the tensions and promises of current medical education and practice. Making a Good Doctor is a weave of academic inquiry, personal narrative, literary reflection, and pedagogical dialogue.

Across eighteen chapters, the book explores the emergence of medicalization, over-diagnosis, alienation, burnout, moral injury, and the commodification of care. It celebrates the joy of medicine, its power to heal— the transformative force of listening, of dialogue, of shared presence.

Key Features

• Offers a uniquely holistic combination of personal stories and critical perspectives on current medical education and practice
• Builds around a person-centred ideal that sets the humanity of both patients and professionals at the centre of medical education and practice
• Expresses ideas and ideals that have been tested in educational practice and have solid theoretical underpinnings in medical philosophy and psychological and pedagogical research

This book is directed toward the medical practitioner, educator, or student interested in understanding more about the forces that shape, and distort, medical culture and healthcare systems. It is for those interested in developing insight; in learning techniques for collaboration, resistance, resilience, and change.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International license.

Edvin Schei

I was, long ago, a critical medical student who hoped in vain that medicine would teach me about people and make me wiser. Slowly, learning from my patients, I found my way as a family doctor, a teacher of medical students, a researcher in medical education, and an advocate of human connection in medicine. I have been a visiting scholar at Boston University, McGill University in Montreal, and Maastricht University. I have learned that medicine, and patients, profit from philosophy, friendliness, humour and honesty.

Iona Heath

I worked as a general practitioner in a deprived inner-city area of London for almost 35 years. It was an amazing place to work and I learnt almost everything I know from the courage and endurance of my patients and from colleagues from across the world but perhaps especially from Scandinavia. I discovered that the work of general practice has such an astonishing breath that reading almost any book, fiction or non-fiction, has something to teach us about the human condition that is relevant to our work. Reading taught me to write and writing has helped me to think.

Peter Dorward

I am a family physician, and medical teacher, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I have a long interest in the intersections of medicine, philosophy and literature, and talk and write extensively on this subject. I am the author of 'The Human Kind, A Doctor's Stories from the Heart of Medicine" (Bloomsbury 2018)

Caroline Engen

I trained as a cancer researcher before turning to psychiatry and a scholarly path in the philosophy of medicine. This path continues to shape both my clinical work and academic inquiry, and has taught me to see suffering not only as something to be known and treated, but as something that reveals. My work largely focuses on epistemological and ethical dimensions of contemporary medicine.