Here is a video with some advice about sore throats and how you can treat them, or when you might need to see a Nurse Practitioner or GP.
I’ve been working on some videos to help parents know how to help their kids with common conditions, and when they might need to see a nurse practitioner or GP. There are several to follow, but here is one on earache:
In the USA, doctors have the highest rate of suicide of any profession. In the UK, a similar picture unfolds. Why is it, that 69% of all physicians suffer with depression at least one time in their career? It could be because of the high workload, high stress, high demand, an increased sense of professional isolation coupled with a growing powerlessness to effect change to the systems that often work against the real healing of people.
I think all of those reasons are there for sure. But I also think that as doctors become increasing slaves of a system, they lose touch with themselves, the things that make them unique, and are expected instead to act like robots, or cogs in a machine that get people just well enough to return to work and be of benefit to the economy. We have managed to disconnect clinicians from their own sense of humanity. But the art of healing is so much more holistic and profound than the science of clinical medicine.
If I were to design a health centre, it would not look like any of the places I work in. They are all far too clinical and are probably not very conducive to healing. For starters, there would be a whole lot more natural light, with beautiful artwork (I have some amazing pieces in my room now, by a brilliant local artist, Emma Hamilton) and sense of a continuum with the landscape. There would be places for people to talk with each other around tables where food and drink could be served, isolation broken and community restored. There would be places to encourage exercise or mindfulness through colouring. My room would have a piano in the corner and it would be filled with art, poems, quotes and there would be huge windows with magnificent views of the sea.
And my consultations (which could be conducted outside whenever possible!) would use not just my clinical knowledge, but would reflect more of 
who I am. Even now, I spend a lot of time laughing with my patients. Laughter is so good! It is healing in and of itself. There would be time for music. I would sing to my patients (they might well leave faster!)……Every doctor I know has talents, gifts, hobbies, and hidden depths that are rarely used when they encounter their patients. I wonder how much more effective we might be as healers, if we reconnected with the God-given sense of who we are and what makes our own hearts sing.
I love the story of the Obstetrician from Pittsburgh, who sings to every baby he delivers. What a beautiful thing. What might we all do more of as clinicians, if we thought of ourselves as healers? What spaces might we create? What might our consultations become? I wonder if we did this…..would we be less depressed and more happy in our work? And might we be more effective in gifting wellness to our communities?
In my last vlog, I started looking at how we might use the 5 Ways to Well-being to help build resilience and promote health, particularly for those who work within the NHS (though it can apply to anyone). This second vlog takes a look at the being active and how it can improve health and well-being.
I’ve been thinking about making a New Year’s Resolution. So, this year, taking my role as lead for health and well-being seriously, my resolution is simple. In 2016 I want to improve my well-being and encourage others to do the same.
The New Economics Foundation have done some amazing work on how we can improve our well-being. “NEF is the UK’s leading think tank promoting social, economic and environmental justice. Their aim is to 
transform the economy so that it works for people and the planet. The UK and most of the world’s economies are increasingly unsustainable, unfair and unstable. It is not even making us any happier – many of the richest countries in the world do not have the highest well-being.” Have a read about their incredible work (www.neweconomics.org).
NEF have come up with 5 simple ways to improve well-being and my New Year’s resolution is to use their 5 steps and blog about the effects I experience personally as a result. I hope that this will be replicated in my work as our team engages with communities. So, here are the steps:
1) CONNECT – this year I am going to be more present. I have found that ridding myself of my
personal twitter account and spending less time on social media has already helped this. I am going to listen with attention and speak with intention. I am going to listen with attention to my wife, my children, my friends, my family and my patients (rather than assuming what they will say) and I am going to behold them, dig for the treasure in them and be grateful for them. I am also more well when I connect with God, who is love. For me, more than anything this means taking time to be still. Being part of a community, rather than moping around in self-isolation (a tendency of mine at times – surprising for an extreme extrovert!) is also key.
2) BE ACTIVE – This year we are launching a really exciting sports initiative in our local schools to 
encourage our kids to have better health long into the future. I am going to continue running and swimming, but I will increase this to ensure I am being active on a daily basis.
3) TAKE NOTICE – I have a painting on the wall in my consulting room (done by an amazing local artist) that has these words on it: “Take time to do what makes your soul happy.” I am going to feed my soul good things this year by noticing what is around me. I live in a world, surrounded by beauty – from tiny rare orchids to vast mountains, the sea and the night sky. I am going to notice this beauty more.
4) KEEP LEARNING – I already have some things booked in. I’m going on a refresher skiing course,
before we take to the mountains in February. I am widening my culinary skills with some cooking lessons. I am re-learning how to arrange some pieces for our local choir. I am continuing to work with a life coach and the NHS leadership program. This will be a year in which I learn a lot! I love learning.
5) GIVE – At the beginning of every year, my wife and I review our finances and make sure that we are giving enough money away. We try to ensure that we give at least 15-20% of what we earn to various friends or charities. Money can have such a hold and I find as I earn more, it is easier to get sucked into an unhealthy 
view of it. Money is just money. I am determined to have a relationship with it that is joyful and giving rather and anxious and hoarding. I love the phrase – “Live Generously”. I want to live in a way that gives of my time, skills, energy and resources without burning out in the process! My life coach has taught me well about boundaries – very empowering, as long as the motivation is to be able to give. It’s amazing how much a sense of giving/contributing to community and the world really improves our sense of well-being. It’s not an easy path. It’s all too easy to get one’s sense of self-esteem and self-worth by how much one gives, so I will try and remain honest about this.
So, if you want 2016 to be a year in which your well-being increases, why not try the 5 ways above? And if you fall over, get back up and keep walking!
In my last blog post, I talked about the concept of meta-narratives and how they effect our health and wellbeing. For me the Christmas story is the ultimate meta-narrative (the big story with which I align my life). It changes the idea forever that God is a far off hierarchical, imperial, power-hungry megalomaniac. It eradicates the notion that we must go to him where he is in some special sacred space and will only find him if we clean up our act and start behaving in certain ways. No. He comes to us. This story (as JRD Kirk says) is not one of God changing his mind about humanity, but about humanity changing its mind about who God is.
He comes to be with us and changes himself in the process. He becomes utterly human, not some weird, ready-break glowing child, but deeply human and in so doing destroys the stories we have told ourselves about what he is like. He comes to us. He comes right to our very situations, our joys, or triumphs, our brokenness and our shame and says, I AM with you. And if you run away, I’m there with you. And if you turn away, I’m there with you. And if you hide away, I’m there with you. And if you fail, I’m there with you. And if you don’t believe, I’m there with you in your unbelief. Because contrary to the caricature of Dawkins, I am love itself. A love that will pour itself out time and again. A love that is stronger than bitterness, hate and division. A love that is willing to be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented. This is not the story of a God who slaughters his enemies in order to protect himself and those he holds close (a narrative upon which the nation state is built and uses to predicate the violence it does to others – and if you don’t believe me, then you haven’t read enough history). No, this is a story about a love that will lay its own life down for its enemies and enables us to do the same.
As Steve Chalk says, Jesus never came to start a religion. He came to start a political, social, economic and spiritual revolution. God with us – wherever we are. The God who prioritises the poor, the refugee/marginalised/outcast, the sick, the prisoner, the woman, the child, the environment. The powers have never and will never understand 
or overcome this light. The promise of the light is peace. Peace on earth. If we embrace the way of love, anything is possible. Even in the midst of all the turmoil in our world this Christmas, I find great hope in the idea of God, who is love, with us in it all. I believe that when we embrace this light and this love as our meta-narrative, as our raison d’être, we find healing for ourselves individually and corporately.
I have the joy of leading some health and well-being retreats with a good friend of mine, who is a life coach. The retreats look at the idea of alignment. Human beings are unique and beautiful, incredibly intricate and are made up of layers, like an onion. Some of those layers are individual and some are corporate, because no person is an island. At the core of who you are is your spirit, your unique self. Then there is your soul – that sweet mixture of emotions, thoughts, ideas, hopes, longings, memories, hurts, resentments, desires, etc. All of that is encased in a physical body, with all the complexities that the intertwining systems entail. And these 3 parts of you are constantly interacting and affecting one ano
ther. For example, physical pain caused to you by another person, may cause you to feel emotionally hurt also (soul pain) and crush your spirit. Or indeed, as I see many times in my work, emotional pain leads to a resentment, which causes a bitterness which manifests itself in a physical pain and so too your spirit is negatively affected.
But you do not just float around in a bubble. You exist in a corporate body, in a family, group of friends and community. You live in an environment of some sort, and your surroundings have an incredible amount of ability to affect your health and well-being. This is evidenced in the effect of air pollution on respiratory disease or the effect of isolation or indeed bullying on mental health. We are all aware of the sights, sounds, smells and stressors in our physical geographies. Added to this corporate body is our corporate soul. And in the corporate soul we find corporate memories, ideas and beliefs, fears and dreams, things we have been taught, world views that shape us and all of this feeds into our meta-narratives, the stories with which we align our lives, that give us some sort of meaning. Surrounding all of this? The corporate spirit. Love. God is Love, not fear, or hatred or violence or bigotry or judgment, but Love. We find time and again in our own lives and in the lives of those who come on retreat the misalignment/disalignment/nonalignment that happens so easily, not necessarily through anyone’s fault, but because life is so complex.
It’s not as simple as tweaking one thing and then everything falls into place. Many of us still have to live with chronic and enduring illness of various sorts, be that mental or physical and achieving 
“perfect health” may not be possible. But alignment is possible and it is this that gives us a sense of well-being. So, how well are you? Do you know how much you are influenced by the corporate body and soul? What are your meta-narratives? How aligned are you? There are things we cannot change, but we can chose how we respond to them and the choices we make within them. I want to unpack this a bit more in subsequent posts, but this might just kick off some musings.
There is a lie that has been told, to clinicians in particular, that it is wrong to get too close to patients. One is told to keep a healthy
separation, perhaps to make the tragedy we often deal with somewhat more bearable. We have shaped medical ethics around the four core principles of beneficence (do good), non-maleficence (don’t do harm), autonomy (respect a person’s own wishes) and justice (treat everyone the same). But as the black eyed peas would ask us (!), 
where is the love? Where is the love and compassion that makes us human and deeply connects us to the ‘other’ and even the ‘other, other’ (someone so different to us that we find it almost impossible to connect to them)?
I was involved in a conversation recently with Phil Cass, a psychologist and CEO of a healthcare company, from Ohio, about this very subject. He told me some very stark facts. In the USA, the highest suicide rate is now amongst physicians and 67% of medics suffer with depression. Studies found that although these people were motivated by love, they found it very hard to receive love back from those they were giving love to.
We have made the clinician-patient relationship a one way system, and we shut down the reciprocity of the love we give in the name of ethics and professionalism. But this is to our great detriment. Patients love and trust their doctors, nurses and therapists and this love could be a huge source of resilience, courage, support and hope. We must let down our guard and receive back the gift that we give in order to
become more healed ourselves. It will allow us to enjoy our work more, reconnect with the core motivation inside us and encourage us, because when we give and receive love it spurs us on to keep going when the system feel like it is against us.
 BE ACTIVE (Changing the culture of the NHS)){kind=link}
