Letters to a Young Doctor: Exploring and Surviving a Career in Medicine
Abstract
“As the afternoon wore on, all those providing the service slid lower behind their consulting desk, weighed down by patient after patient with seemingly unending back pain, showing no sign of remission”.
He fears the physical alienation in the virtual world of social media and worries that students studying long hours online will lose their social skills. He emphasises that “medicine is as much an art as it is a science”. Verbal and non-verbal communication is an art needing empathy and the ability to recognise nuances in the facial expressions and body language of a patient.